Thankless Job
by sunshinesyndrome
Summary: It's a thankless job, but somebody's gotta do it.
1. Chapter One: As the World Falls Down

**Took some creative liberties with Charon's story, since we don't get much of it. I quite like the fact that they're vague with the details of his contract and his past/upbringing/etc, as it gives a chance for things like this to be written. Any constructive criticism or corrections would be much appreciated, as this was written at roughly three in the morning, and was not beta-read. If there are enough requests, I may make this multi-chaptered, dealing with Charon being hired by the Lone Wanderer, since that time period is about when this ends. Any ideas regarding that would be much appreciated, if that is what you, as the readers, request.**

**_EDIT: _Long story short, as far as this first chapter goes, this sort of my head canon for how Charon came to be, well... The snappy ghoul we all know and love. I like to think it makes quite a bit of sense and follows a timeline fairly well, but, well, only reviews can really tell me if I'm correct.**

**_EDITEDIT:_ Oh, come on! Seven hits and not a single review? Normally, I wouldn't ask for them, but, well... This _is_ the first Fallout 3 story I've ever written, along with the first one I've written since I was twelve and thought I was cool for writing in all caps.  
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><p>"<strong>Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness.<strong>"

When asked, Ahzrukhal will tell you little more about Charon's past than that he was raised by a group of people who brainwashed him into obeying whoever _physically_ has his contract. Ahzrukhal insists that he isn't a slave. What Ahzrukhal doesn't mention is that the people responsible for brainwashing Charon were part of some big name corporation that was going strong, until shortly after Operation: Anchorage began, and the fact that his name is definitely not Charon. Ahzrukhal implies that Charon did something in the past to deserve his 'employment' — but he's wrong. Charon is only a child, ten years old when his parents pass and those men find him weeping at their graves, shaking like a leaf in the pouring rain. It's two years later, after they've done extensive testing — physical, mental, emotional — that his training starts. At seventeen, he has exceeded all expectations they had, and is one of seven to survive this treatment. By the time he turns twenty-five, he's one of two left, trained in stealth, and enlisted in the military.

The men in possession of his contract force him to enlist when he's twenty-three, selling his contract to the lieutenant general the moment Charon — then known by some generic name that he hardly remembers now, after two hundred years, like John Smith or James Anderson or _something _— managed to rank as brigadier general. After two months with his contract in the possession of the lieutenant general, he gains the nickname 'Charon', after the ferryman of the river Styx, for taking out more of both the elite and standard Chinese troops than any other soldier. Despite outranking a majority of the military personnel where he is stationed, Charon is not treated as such, thanks to his contract — most of the soldiers consider him little more than a pathetic fucking slave, and the small handful of people who outrank him do nothing to stop this.

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><p>When the bombs fall, Charon's employer is killed, while Charon miraculously survives, taking massive amounts of radiation. It only continues, as Charon is incapable of taking his contract from the corpse — something inlaid deeply in him by his training to keep him from taking the contract while his employer sleeps and running off, his freedom literally in the palm of his hand. He waits there for weeks, watching that corpse, only occasionally looking away to find food, and not even thinking about the fact that the radiation isn't even bothering him anymore. It doesn't worry him that his skin is starting to peel — this is just the beginning, he figures his skin's just dry. It doesn't even worry him that now, after who knows how many weeks, the radiation isn't an annoying tickle that makes him vaguely sick to his stomach — it's a pleasant warmth that spreads from his abdomen and makes him feel infinitely better, stronger.<p>

It's been roughly two months when Ahzrukhal happens by, skin already deteriorated, rotting, discoloured — he got the worst of the radiation poisoning. Charon still has most of his skin, even if it's ruined. Almost all of the skin on Ahzrukhal's body is visible thanks to the merc grunt outfit he's currently clad in — not unlike what they will later see Doctor Barrows in — and most of it is gone. There are small patches of flesh left on his arms, and shoulders, and, based solely on the holes in his pants, it's safe to say most of the skin on his legs is gone too — but even at a distance, Charon can tell that what skin is left, stretched taut over muscle and bone from not eating enough for too long, is leathery, and he can smell what he thinks is the wet coppery smell of blood. It's just Ahzrukhal, he is startled to find out. This is when Charon starts paying attention to the fact that his fucking skin is rapidly peeling away in long strips or short, square patches.

Ahzrukhal catches sight of him, sees the body of that lieutenant general, surprisingly well-preserved due to the radiation and approaches. When he speaks, Charon doesn't answer, merely stares from him, to the corpse, and back again. The ghoul takes this as a hint, kneels beside the body and digs through the pockets of the old blue jeans and suit jacket. His beady eyes, a faded shade of what may have once been green or blue or something inbetween, narrow as he finds Charon's contract, reading over the words that had once been clearly printed in black ink, words that were now smudged and faded after the contract had spent too much time in someone's pocket. Then, that sleazy rat _bastard_ has the audacity to grin like a fucking Cheshire cat, and that's when Charon knows he's in for a whole fuckton of trouble. As it turns out, blood or caps aren't required to for the transfer of the contract the way his fucking _makers _claimed to get all of that cash in return for his contract — it's all about possession, and Ahzrukhal, from this point out, keeps that damn contract on his person at all times. Charon doesn't know where. He doesn't want to.

They trek across the states, all the way from Texas, where his stupid goddamn employer had insisted on moving after Operation: Anchorage had more or less ended, claiming he was tired of the cold and being able to see Russia from his house (Charon had known that was a joke, but he couldn't quite bring himself to laugh), all the way to Florida. They stay there for ten years, Charon constantly watching over the house that Ahzrukhal had claimed as their own while that bastard runs who the fuck knows where. One day, when Ahzrukhal returns, he orders Charon to gather their things, because they're going to fucking DC, to the ruins of the old Museum of Natural History. He figured it was because he'd been stuck in this fucking _shack_ for so damn long, but he hadn't heard a goddamn thing about this 'Underworld' place that Ahzrukhal wouldn't shut the fuck up about, supposedly a safe haven for ghouls.

Whatever the fuck a ghoul was.

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><p>By the time they reach what was once the National Museum of National History about two and a half weeks later, Charon's skin is completely ruined. It'd been peeling for some time now, the muscle that was slowly exposing itself turning smooth and feeling vaguely like those shitty fake leather couches that all of the kids in his neighborhood had had when he was a child. Surprisingly, he isn't upset to see his skin go. He'd come to accept whatever happened to him, come to assume that he deserved it after some of the shit he'd done before his contract was sold to Lieutenant General Ryan Hart. When he realizes that it's the first time since his death that he's thought of his former employer (he has to remind himself that one of the only orders he was given after Operation: Anchorage was to address the man as Ryan — the other being to act as he might if he were free) by name, he frowns. Ryan had been a good man.<p>

By the time Doctor Barrows arrives in Underworld, roughly three months after Carol and Greta, and that fucking sap Gobtholomew that Carol calls her son, Charon's ghoulification is complete. As a human, he'd stood at six foot five, with thick, red hair that was left shaggier than was really helpful in what was officially the Capitol Wastes, and kept off his forehead by a black bandana; He'd constantly worn his dog tags, one labeled with his real name, the metal so worn it could no longer be read, and the other labeled 'Charon'; He consistently wore the pants from his military uniform, along with an old, white tank top. Now that he was officially a ghoul, regardless of if he was effectively stuck in fucking Underworld for the rest of his miserable life, he figured combat leathers were better — kept him protected on the off-chance that he had to leave, and it was easy enough to clean vomit off of them if one of the drunken idiots he had to throw out of the Ninth Circle (the stupid fucking bar and junkie corner that rat bastard employer of his had opened) managed to blow chunks all over him. On top of that, his hair had been coming out in chunks for days - the last thing to go. All that was left now was a few wisps here and there.

He threw away the bandana that he'd had for years.

He's there for a whole goddamned century by the time someone (not just someone, some stupid fuckhead ghoul who'd lived in Underworld for years) is stupid enough to bring a weapon into the bar. Instead of escorting the fucker out, he simply plucks the combat shotgun off the table from beside him — when the other ghoul protests, Charon simply shoots him a menacing look and returns to his corner. Over the next seventy-five years, he starts modifying it — fixes it so there's less kickback, so that each shot is more powerful; Hell, at one point, he tampered with the idea modifying it so that it could also fire grenades. He didn't have the time or the funds for that, since he wasn't getting fucking paid.

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><p>By the time humans, smoothskins, start occasionally trickling into Underworld, battered and bruised and pumped full of lead thanks to the horrendous amount of fucking super mutants that have filled the area outside, carving out trenches and setting surprisingly elaborate traps, Charon has 'officially' been a ghoul for one hundred seventy-five years and five months - nearly two damn centuries. And the entire time, he's been stuck in a goddamn corner in the Ninth Circle, only moving if the drunks got rowdy or crossfaded on too much booze and jet. Almost two hundred years of total and complete monotony, of mind-numbing boredom and napping in spare minutes for a week whenever a new ghoul would stumble upon Underworld and make it their home, because Ahzrukhal was paranoid. But that was still better than it had been at the beginning - at the beginning, Charon had stayed awake for days at a time. He had been trained to stay up for three, then nap in spare minutes when you thought it was safe. Ahzrukhal had him staying up for a week at a time, until Doc Barrows had wandered in one day with Patchwork, complaining that his limbs always seemed to fall off more frequently after the sloppy ghoul had spent time in the bar and seen Charon in the corner. Ghoul or no, stoic or no, it was easy to tell he had been awake for days - and Barrows knew that, if they hadn't already, soon the micro naps would start, and with them would come the hallucinations.<p>

Things had been better, after that.

Ahzrukhal knew Charon's contract like the back of his ruined hand by the time the second century rolled to a close. Knew the ins and outs of every clause and could probably figure out a good handful of loopholes for most of them. At least he didn't have to run about, performing menial fucking tasks - it said in his contract, in fairly specific terms, that his services applied to combat only. Being a bouncer in the Ninth Circle was a loophole - he didn't usually have to fight anyone, but he assumed that Ahzrukhal had defined what he was to in the contract, added to the end of it so that he could keep him here. And since physical violence only invalidated the contract if Ahzrukhal himself was the one perpetrating said violence… Well, that was an obvious enough loophole, and Charon had harmed himself on more than one occasion, on Ahzrukhal's orders. After all, for good or ill, he served him.

The rat bastard.


	2. Chapter Two: Nihil Novi Sub Sole

**And here's another installment. I'm sort of experimenting with tenses, so if it flows oddly, let me know. Also, if someone would like to be my beta reader... Well, that would be incredibly helpful. I'd like someone to run the finished chapters by; Someone who may notice corrections needing to be made, or parts of the story that just... Don't really make sense. I _am_ just getting back into the swing of writing things, after all - at least, things over five or six hundred words. **

**As before, reviews would be appreciated, to let me know if I should add/change things, or change the characterization of Charon up or what have you. I honestly don't have the foggiest idea of where I'm going with this story, so suggestions as far as that go would also be absolutely lovely.  
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><p>Charon is lucky, as far his ghoulification is concerned. Unlike the most of the others, he still has a good deal of skin left, even if it is coarse and leathery like the flesh of someone who's spent far too much time in the sun. His eyes are still mostly blue, albeit milky behind the film that's formed over them. He hasn't had to work out since he was completely human - the radiation preserved what muscle he had, kept it from deteriorating. And he was fucking lucky that had happened, with how often he got a chance to move around; If it weren't for being a ghoul, his muscles probably would have atrophied years ago. He has more hair than everyone here, sans Carol, Greta and Snowflake; but he's pretty sure Snowflake's on the fast track to being bald as a fucking cue ball - he only showed up fifty years ago, after being kicked out of that hunk of shit called Rivet City.<p>

All in all, he's got it pretty good, despite this stupid fucking contract and the slimy fuckhead it has him bound to. That, and the fact that all he ever gets to hear about the outside world is from the goddamn radio, with that stupid asshole Three Dog howling about 'Miss 101', the saviour of the Wastes. Charon calls bullshit on that - no fucking way is some naive little girl who crawled out of a vault in search of daddy going to be able to pull off all of this shit. No way she'd be able to haul herself out of the vault, blinking into the sun she'd obviously never seen, and manage to find a gun, let alone figure out how to use one efficiently enough that she could take out the entire population of Paradise Falls.

Yeah, he was calling bullshit on that.

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><p>The shit hits the proverbial fan the next time a smoothskin wanders into Underworld. He just hears about it at first, a whole week and four days of whispers and paranoia, but no face to blame. The fifth day of the second week, the smoothskin wanders into the Ninth Circle, and Charon can't help but quirk what's left of an eyebrow.<p>

The smoothskin is all pale skin and beguiling smiles, with large, clear grey eyes behind the lenses of a pair of worn tortoiseshell glasses; High cheek bones and full lips seeming all the more dramatic thanks to her hair, a shade of white that he would expect of someone in their nineties, being pulled into a sloppy bun at the back of her head. She wears one of those stupid merc charmer outfits - the blue skirt and top, the torn black leggings - but she's obviously taken the boots from a set of leather armor she found in the wastes. Probably a good decision - those boots are heavy duty, require almost no upkeep to stay in good condition. What catches his eye is the heavily modified hunting shotgun she has slung on her back; She doesn't look like she has the know-how to do that. She must have picked it off a corpse, he decides.

He watches her slide over to the bar, perching herself on one of the stools - he may be more than fast enough to move from the corner to the bar before the damn smoothskin has a chance to pull the gun from her back, but he'd much rather be prepared. He hears her speak, voice smoky, something he didn`t entirely expect - but it didn't surprise him. Nothing fucking surprised him anymore.

"My name's Salinger," she all but coos, and fuck, Charon knows that she's got Ahzrukhal under her spell. That rat bastard thinks he's got a chance at bedding a smoothskin after he closes down the Ninth Circle tonight, that much is obvious. He doesn't know what they say after that; They start speaking in hushed tones and Salinger is leaning over the bar in a way that Charon's not sure if he trusts. Whatever she's said now, his employer doesn't like it - the narrowed eyes and clenched jaw project that. Charon takes a few steps forward, but a simple shake of the head is enough to return him to the corner. It's ten minutes before Charon starts scanning the rest of the bar, deciding that if the smoothskin posed a real threat, she would have done something by now.

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><p>There's that all too familiar jingle and scrape, the sound of someone gathering the caps from their pockets and pushing them across the bar. Vaguely, Charon wonders what's been purchased - beer, jet, psycho, some-fucking-thing he didn't even know Ahzrukhal kept in his inventory? Then footsteps, and he returns his eyes to the bar, only to see the fair-haired smoothskin standing before him - she's much smaller up close than he expected. Maybe five foot six to his six foot five, and looking to be roughly one hundred twenty pounds.<p>

"Talk to Ahzr-"

"Now, now, sweetheart. Let's not be brash." She holds up a faded, crumpled sheet of paper, 'Salinger Harper' scrawled along the bottom in a messy script. "I'm your employer now."

Charon is caught off guard, rendered completely silent as he blinks down at her. He feels strangely free, knowing he's no longer under the employ of that evil bastard. "You purchased my contract from Ahzrukhal...?" Wide eyes stare back at him, and Charon bites back the urge to snap at her to keep her eyes in her fucking skull or he'll sew her eyelids together - he doesn't like being stared at. "So, I am no longer in his service. That is... Good to know. Please, wait here. I must take care of something."

He steps around the smoothskin - his employer - removing his combat shotgun from his back as he approaches his former employer. "Ah, Charon. Come to say goodbye to your old employer?" Polite as he put on the illusion of being, Ahzrukhal was still a rat bastard, and Charon was going to put an end to it. An almost feral grin crosses his features at the thought and he shrugs.

"Something like that."

_Cha-CHUNG!_

_Cha-CHUNG!_

It took two shots to all but obliterate Ahzrukhal's head and left shoulder, and earn a whole lot of fucking confusion from the smoothskin, Charon notes as he returns his shotgun to his back.

"The _fuck_ was that?" Salinger demands, flicking a stray chunk of what had once been Ahzrukhal's face from her shoulder. It's only four months she's been out of the vault, but she's no stranger to blood and guts - she just wants to know why she's just seen someone shot in the face at close range in an otherwise civilized place.

Her questioning only earns her a shrug and a comment that she found less than helpful. "Ahzrukhal was an evil bastard. I was honour bound to serve him." With a frown tugging at her lips, Salinger turns on her heel and marches away, out the open doors of the Ninth Circle and across the concourse into Carol's. There's got to be a way out of this, somewhere in the contract. She was going to stay here for an extra day or two, scour that contract for a way to set this Charon character free. She may not always make the best decisions, but she didn't condone slavery, and whether other people agreed with her or not, Charon was, effectively, a slave.

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><p>"Carol!" she calls, grinning at the little ghoul woman she seems come running, brandishing a couple of envelopes and apologizing profusely for not being finished with her letters to Gob quite yet. Holding up her hands in mock surrender, Salinger laughs, shaking her head. "No, no! I just need a room for a couple of days - one with two beds, if the one I usually take isn't open. I know I wasn't planning on staying long, at first..."<p>

It's only when Salinger mentions two beds that Carol takes note of the hulking ghoul behind the human girl, and her milky eyes shoot wide. "Sallie, dear, what _have_ you gotten yourself into?"

She can't bring herself to lie to Carol, not in good conscience. Even when she'd first come to Underworld, and asked if she knew Gob... It would have been better for her to lie, leave Carol in the dark about her son's less than pleasant predicament. Instead, she had spilled the beans, and when the woman looked nothing short of horrified, she'd rushed around the counter and pulled her into a hug. _"But don't you worry, Mama Carol. I'm gonna get him out." _she'd told her. And now, as she grinned at the pre-war ghoul, she sighed. "I bought his contract off Ahzrukhal. Figured I'd find some way to free him if I stay here a while longer, go over his contract."

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><p>They're not even there a whole night before Three Dog started up with his goddamn howling, launching into yet another story of 'Miss 101'. Salinger scowled - no wonder Talon Company always knew where she was, the way Three Dog went on about her.<p>

"Gooooooooood evening, listeners!" She tunes him out for the time being, frowning as she nibbles at a bowl of noodles. More of her achievements listed, like she ever needs a reminder. "Now, if you want to thank Miss 101 for your ability to hear me loud and clear all across the Capital Wasteland, you head right on over to Underworld! Ask the man in charge for 'Sallie Harper'!" Her head shoots up, eyes narrow, and she switches off the radio on her pipboy - not that it helps, there's still that damned radio on the counter, blaring what had before been just an echo of what she was already hearing. She was going to have to make a stop at the GNR building again, have a little talk with the DJ - she doesn't want to use force, hurt someone who doesn't really deserve it, but if that ends up being the only way for her to get her point across... She would have to take it.

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><p>Saying that Charon is surprised to find that this slight little girl is the saviour of the wastes is an understatement. He hasn't been surprised, truly surprised, since he was human, the day the bombs fell. Now, he's seeing his employer in a whole new light - instead of some stupid kid... Well, he still thinks he's a stupid kid, but now she's a stupid kid who managed to do more for the wasteland in four months than anyone else has managed in decades. He isn't sure how he feels about that, not really. Part of him is happy that he has an employer who's moral code matches his own more closely than Ahzrukhal's had; the other part of him is irritated that this goddamn vault kid thinks she can just march her ass in here and assume that she can free him. A lot of the terms are open to interpretation - the one clause that could completely free him, the clause stating the violence on her fault negates the contract... That comes down to what he interprets as genuine intent to arm him. He doesn't tell her this - he doesn't think she's even gotten to that part of his contract yet.<p> 


	3. Chapter Three: The Taste of Ink

**Three chapters within, what, a day? This will… Probably never happen again, but I'm babysitting, and I needed something to do. I'm still experimenting with tenses and different, er… Facets of Charon's personality. If anything seems off, mention it in a review and I'll be sure to get around to changing it as soon as I can. I'm still looking for a beta reader, since I tend to completely miss mistakes that I've made if they don't come up in spell check - use of the wrong word or punctuation is something I miss entirely when reading over my own stories before I post them, even if I can point it out rather consistently in the stories of others. To make a long story short: Read; review; criticize, if you so choose. A ton of hits doesn't really help me know if there's something I'm doing right or wrong - I need your reviews for that.**

**_EDIT:_ I've had to reupload this, since the file glitched and I couldn't tell if it had actually uploaded the correct version of the chapter, because it wouldn't let me view the story.  
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><p>He hasn't been timid since he was a child, sobbing in the compound where he was trained; Hasn't been polite since the last time he visited his parents graves, before all the training ever started. His employers have always made it extremely clear, in no uncertain terms, that they thought they were better than he was, all because they weren't tied to some stupid fucking sheet of paper with words that were faded to grey on yellow. His contract, that had once been clearly printed on startlingly white paper, was now old enough that he was actually surprised it was still in fucking tact. Never mind that it had started out as three sheets of paper, front only, clearly detailing what needed to be done, and had been reduced to one, the terms vaguely explained on the front and back. It still explained that it was for combat services… But he'd been stuck being a bouncer in the Ninth Circle for so long that he didn't even give a shit if the vault girl made him run stupid errands for her, so long as he actually got to move more than ten feet.<p>

To put the icing on the stale, metaphorical fucking cake that was his fucking shitty life, those employers had also always been men. Now that he not only had a female employer, but an employer who has yet to give him an order since receiving his contract, he's nothing short of lost. He knows the contract is only good for combat, but he really wished she'd just give him some sort of order or _something _- be it 'sit down and shut up' or 'maintain the weapons' - just so he could take comfort in something he fucking knew. It wasn't asking much, and he knew it was strange to want to be given a command; It was just what he knew, how he'd been raised and trained and fuck, if she managed to set him free, he really didn't know what he'd do. He hadn't ever really been free - but neither had most people. As a child, your parents are your masters, your gods, forcing you down the path they've chosen for you, whether or not you're interested. As you get older, find a job - your job takes you over, even if it's not a job you like. You like it, you talk about it a lot, try to get others to see it as you do; You hate it, and all you do is bitch like a little fucking princess, like complaining is going to suddenly earn you so much money that you never have to work again. In the end, death is what rules you - you either fear it and avoid everything, are indifferent and go on living, or you accept it and go looking for it.

May that was just his experience.

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><p>They've been in Underworld a full two weeks longer than was originally planned when Salinger is finally sure that she understands Charon's contract as well as someone with no law degree can. In fact, she knew next to nothing about laws of any sort - the goddamn G.O.A.T. exam had said she was meant to be the vault psychologist. A psychologist couldn't even prescribe medication if it was needed. Nope, that was dear old dad's job, and then he'd decided to run out on her like a fucking coward, leaving her with a bunch of shit-for-brains vault dwellers who didn't seem to be aware of the fact that they were about two generations away from the inbreeding beginning, and after that… Well, they could only avoid becoming an inbred cesspool, completely destroying the purpose of the vault, for so long. Most of them don't even have the genes to keep a diverse gene pool going anymore - those vaults had been around for how long now, and people were just starting to die out? At least, vault 101. The others she'd managed to find in her travels… She shuddered at the thought. The fact that there had been someone out there who obviously felt absolutely no remorse when they'd sent out letters to families, promising them safety only to turn around perform some sort of crackpot social experiment on them… It unsettled her. Made her feel like this whole goddamn wasteland was just some sort of sick simulation designed to teach people survival or see the different paths people would take. She didn't like the idea of being toyed with like that.<p>

She hasn't given Charon a single order the entire time she's been studying his contract. Mercenary or not, ghoul or human, he was still a person, and having complete control over someone who will serve you 'for good or ill' (his words, not her own) was not something she wanted. All she wanted was for everyone in the fucking Capital Wasteland to stop enslaving people, stop killing people - just work together and get the world back to what it was like before, or something close to it. The fact that it was taking some vault kid whose hair had gone completely white at sixteen to do all this work to help the wasteland after it had been destroyed for almost two hundred years… It was pathetic.

Like some song she'd heard on the radio down in the vault had said - '_The future's uncertain and the end is always near_'.

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><p>"Charon." She watches as the ghoul, all six and a half hulking feet of him turn to look at her. By this point, she's noticed that he completely dwarfs her, even seated - he's all height and thick cords of muscle; She's slender with a well-rounded chest and set of hips. Complete opposites, really. Under different circumstances, maybe it would have amused her. "The only way to… To free you from - to cancel out your contract… Physical violence on my part?" When she earns a nod, she pinches the bridge of her nose. Nothing about this can be easy, apparently. "There's no other way?" A shake of the head.<p>

"God_dammit_!" Her patience is rapidly crumbling, keeping her from noticing the fact that her fist is now throbbing - the tables in Underworld were surprisingly sturdy for being old as fuck. She wants nothing more than to ask why he can't just fucking take this lousy sheet of paper and run for the hills (though she would warn him against heading north, where most of the hills she's seen are - there's a shit ton of yao guai up there, and God fucking help him if he happens upon Ol' Olney), but she figures that if he hasn't taken it by now, there has to be a reason for that. The idea of seriously harming Charon doesn't sit right with her - sure, the way he'd just been sitting there, completely silent irritated her, but… Well, she'd grown up with Butch DeLoria and the most she'd ever done was get that kid to swallow a couple of his own molars. Silence was like a fucking blessing, even if he just wasn't talking because she hadn't said he could. It wasn't like she was a good person, anyways, so she wasn't sure why the idea of violence didn't sit well with her this time. It'd been fine when she'd found Silver in Springvale - she hadn't even thought before she'd pulled the trigger and looted the woman's houses; It'd been fine when she'd found Girdershade and picked off Sierra and Ronald from a distance two days later so she could take some of the Nuka-Cola memorabilia in Sierra's shack because she was short on cash. "Look, you ain't done anything wrong by me; Hitting you or shooting you or whatever the fuck it would take to get your contract to be void, it's not going to sit right with me."

Sallie doesn't know where to go from here - doesn't know if she should just ask if he wants her to keep his contract or what. She has an abundance of caps - in just four months, she'd managed to wrangle together upwards of eight thousand. If she's going to keep him around, she decides, she's going to pay him. He's a mercenary anyways; the payment may not be necessary thanks to that piece of paper folded as small as she could manage and tucked into one of her pockets (it was definitely going in a safe when she got home to Megaton, no doubt about it - at least Charon would have some semblance of freedom if she died, then), but if he was going to be one of the only things keeping her from dying as she continued through the wastes, searching for her father, then he deserved half her caps.

With a sigh, she pulls her caps - she's got enough that she'd had to find an extra pouch, something that was currently proving to be more helpful than she'd expected - from her hip, dropping the bags on the table. People were staring now, gaping at the smoothskin seated across from a ghoul as though it were the most normal thing in the world. Rolling her eyes, she glanced at Charon. "Keep watch for a few, would you? Make sure anybody who isn't Carol or Greta doesn't get too close to the table." She doesn't trust people in the wastes with her money - she hadn't trusted people in the vault, either, aside from Amata and Butch. She watches as Charon stands, arms crossing over his chest as he faces away from the table and giving the room a sweep with his eyes. Yeah, she wasn't going to have to worry while she counted. First, she set aside a thousand to pay Carol with (and dammit, she'd give them to Greta to slip in the safe if Carol refused them). Then, she set about splitting the remaining seven thousand between the two bags. It took longer than she`d expected - not that she'd thought it would be fast, counting out cap after cap. Why couldn't they just the paper money they'd used before the war? It would be easier to split, holy fucking shit.

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><p>When his employer finally gives him the okay, Charon turns to find a tattered grey bag being held at eye level. He blinks at the bag, sees his employer and her moonlight colored hair grinning at him around the bag. "Well," she starts with a shrug, "I figured, since the only way to get rid of you is physical violence… I figured I'd just keep you around. <em>And<em> pay you." He wants to tell her he can't accept it, it's not part of the contract, but nowhere does it say that she's not allowed to compensate him for his services if she so chooses - he just wishes she wouldn't. "You _can_ talk, you know. You're a mercenary, by definition, based on what your contract says." She's telling him things that he hadn't ever really thought of, making him wonder if maybe he'd been reading too far into having a contract from the beginning. He doubts it. It's too deeply embedded in his head that he isn't supposed to question his contract. She was probably misinterpreting most of what that paper said, anyways. "You're a mercenary, which means you can walk, talk, eat, laugh, whatever the fuck you want."

That's probably not exactly what it means to be a mercenary, but Charon doesn't question her. He doesn't even know what she wants him to address her as - Mistress or ma'am or Salinger or Sallie or something else entirely. "I am supposed to follow orders, ma'am. For good-"

"Yeah, yeah, for good or ill, you serve me, I know that." He finds himself irritated when she waves a dismissive hand at his words. "Well, I'm telling you, you do what you want. I'll keep your contract, and I'll pay you - do my best to split what we've got down the middle when I can. You think I'm being stupid? Say it. Think we'll have a better advantage if we do something different, use different weapons? Tell me. And if, at any point, you want me to pass your contract on… Tell me that, too." It's quiet for a few moments, awkward as the large ghoul stares at his employer, feeling overwhelmed in what was very much the same way that he had when Ryan Hart had told him to act as a free man so, so long ago. "Ma'am-"

"Shit, I'm nineteen, quit calling me 'ma'am'. My name's Salinger. Call me that, or Sallie, or kid, or… Shit, anything other than 'ma'am'." Something akin to a smirk crosses the ghoul's features, if only for a second, and he nods. Before Sallie has a chance to speak, the ghoul looses a deep chuckle.

"All right then, _smoothskin._"

* * *

><p>Salinger had spent all of her first day back explaining the predicament to Lucas Simms, and mentioning that, in the event of her death (he'd scowled at that, like he didn't want to think about the one person who'd done any good for the town dying), her house would go to Charon. Simms hadn't liked it - enough people had problems with Gob being in town, another ghoul wasn't going to do them any good. "He'll keep the town safe. You think Stockholm and Weld'll keep this place locked down? Like hell. Charon is… Unflinchingly loyal." She'd felt immensely awkward discussing this with Charon in the room, but it didn't matter now - she'd made her point to Simms, and warned him that she was going to get rid of Moriarty if he did anything to Gob after she'd handed over his letters. She wouldn't even have to wait for that; She could just use her last stealth boy and slip an active grenade into the filthy Irishman's pocket and the problem would be solved. But if she went about it that way, Lucas would know it was her, he'd kick her out, even once she spilled the beans about the piss in the still and the way he treated Nova.<p>

The whole second day had been spent moving things around her house to make room for Charon - she'd had to run over to Craterside Supply and buy a bigger bed, or Charon's legs would have been hanging off the edge completely. The downside was that the only larger bed Moira had in stock was shaped like a massive heart and came with hideous magenta and red silk sheet. Charon probably wouldn't mind - he'd just be glad to have a real bed, since it hadn't looked like he'd had one back in Underworld.

They've been back in Megaton for three days before the vault girl makes it to Moriarty's saloon - Sallie was more than a little surprised to not see (or hear, for that matter) Colin Moriarty when they entered the building. But his absence, for the moment, was ideal - it would give her time to slip the two envelopes in her hand to Gob so he could read them. "Gob!" The poor bartender nearly throws the glass he's polishing into the air, he's so caught off guard by her exclamation. She takes off around the bar at breakneck speed, crashing into Gob's chest and throwing her arms around him in a tight embrace just as he sets down the glass. She's come to view the mistreated ghoul as, well… He was nothing short of her best friend. In all her time in the wastes, he was one of few people who was consistently kind to her, no matter the questionable choices she seemed to make. She absolutely loved him to death - and that was saying something considering she'd let out a rather high pitched yelp and promptly passed out the very first time she'd seen him. Pulling away from him, Sallie pressed the envelopes into Gob's hands. "They're from Carol." When she sees the look on his face, some strange mix of happiness and complete misery, she wants to cry. She hasn't wanted to cry since her first day out of the vault. She's definitely taking out Moriarty at the slightest provocation this time. "I'll take her a couple letters back when I leave, if you want? I mean, it's not like it's a problem, you're my best friend and she's your mom and I'm sure Charon wouldn't mind going back to Underworld for a while, anyways, since we'll have to head back in that direction eventually-" She's babbling again, like she always does when she talks to Gob. Something about that poor guy just makes her want to pour her heart out, anything to make him happy since she's gone so often; Nova doesn't really help when she isn't there, from what Gob says. The poor woman's always so stuck in an inhaler of jet that she probably doesn't even remember Gob exists, even when she's speaking to him.

Salinger is so caught up in her babbling that she doesn't even seem to notice the way the remnants of Gob's eyebrows shoot up at the mention of the large ghoul - hell, she doesn't even think about the fact that they'd obviously met in passing, since Gob had come from Underworld. "Charon… Like from the Ninth Circle, _Charon_?" When the girl nods, a quizzical look contorting her features, Gob pats her on the shoulder, like he knows she isn't going to want to hear what he's about to say. "He's bad news, Sal."

* * *

><p>By the time she's managed to drag the fact that they'd met previously out of Charon, it's almost ten o'clock at night, and she's perched on her stairs. He refuses to tell her any more about the circumstances surrounding him and Gob meeting at this juncture, opting instead to begin removing his armor like it will make the vault girl cringe and look away. It doesn't. She stays there, glaring from her seat on the stairs until the ghoul mutters a brief 'good night' and turns off the light, climbing into his bed. With a groan, Sallie makes her way up the stairs to do the same.<p> 


	4. Chapter Four: Monster

**Took some advice for this one. Hope I executed things well? I know my chapter's aren't exactly the longest, but I'm trying to get things out on paper as I think of it, and I'm probably going to post fairly frequently while this is just getting started.**

**Well, I've managed a rough list of the quests I plan on considering 'finished' for the story thus far, along with a list of the ones I would like to work through; The latter is, well… A longer list. You can go ahead message me or leave me a review if you'd like to see the list, and I'll send it to you. I will say this, however - if I continue this beyond Take It Back!****, it will not follow the quest line of Broken Steel. I do not have that DLC, nor do I have Mothership Zeta or Operation: Anchorage. My knowledge of any of those quest lines is based solely on stories on here, along with me spending entirely too much time on the Fallout wiki in an attempt to gain more knowledge, until I have a chance to purchase the final three bits of DLC from the game. I'd also toyed with the idea of keeping this going and having Charon and Sallie move over to the west coast to meet up with good ol' courier six… Scrapped that one pretty quick, since I've seen it in a couple of other stories that involve Charon.**

* * *

><p>By the time she finally works up the courage to make her way to Rivet City and ask about her father, Sallie is pretty sure it's been a year since she's since the inside of the vault where she grew up. She doesn't remember the exact date she left, the files that she downloaded that day, like all the rest, aren't marked with the date. All she remembers is that it's been something like four months since she finally when back to the GNR building to ask Three Dog if he knew where her father was, or where he had headed - the information that was the reason she'd dragged that damn dish from the Museum of Technology to the Washington Monument, doing her best to sneak past the trenches that had been carved out, allowing super mutants to hide. If there was one thing she fucking despised about the Capital Wastes, it was all the fucking super mutants. Yao guai and mole rats and those damn dogs, they could be dealt with easily enough - she was a bit of an animal person, admittedly; Not a single animal had attacked her since her first month out here. She was lucky - she'd seen numerous raiders and random unarmed wastelanders torn apart by one animal or another, and she'd be lying if she said it hadn't scared her at first. The longer she was out, the quicker she had learned that the animals only attacked her if she attacked first; There had been several times where they'd even come to her aid in battle when she needed it most.<p>

That had been before Charon.

She watches as the ghoul in question rushes forward, obviously intent on taking out the final super mutant in their path. They're maybe a quarter of a mile from the city at this point, according her pip-boy, but she's pretty sure that if there's anyone outside the city, they'll have no problem hearing Charon as he bellows, "What's the matter? Can't stand the sight of your own blood?" It still surprises her to hear him speak, even war cries and profanities when in combat, considering that she had been his employer for almost a month and half before he seemed to get that she wasn't fucking with him when she told him he could do whatever he wanted. That was a month and a half of him speaking only when spoken to - if he spoke at all. Most often than not, he'd snorted, or rolled his eyes, or simply ignored her to concentrate on weapon maintenance; That was definitely a good thing, because she tended to completely disregard the condition of her weapons. Maintenance wasn't something she did. If something needed repairs before, she'd taken it to Moira, or Lucky Harith if she was lucky enough to happen upon him.

When she sees the mutant fall, she jogs forward to join Charon, double-checking her pocket to make sure Gob's letters were still there. She'd told him she'd take them to Carol - she'd feel more than a little bit guilty if she lost them. As the city finally comes into sight, the pale girl can't help but gape. When she'd asked Moira about the place, she hadn't told her much about it - she'd said it was an old, broken down ship, but she certainly hadn't said anything about the sheer size. Her eyes wide behind her glasses, she slips past Charon and hurries up the ramps to the intercom. She presses her finger to the button, half-expecting to be greeted by nothing but static thanks to the fact that it's very nearly two in the morning.

"What the hell do you want? It's - Nevermind. Extending the bridge."

* * *

><p>Sallie doesn't know it, but when she finally goes to confront that junkie fuck Leo Stahl about his chem problem, Charon sees her. He follows her down to the Brass Lantern, and nobody aside from those fucking screwball bomb worshippers seems to notice - if they do, they say nothing because they fear him. He stays outside, leaning against the side of the building, and the lone wanderer doesn't even notice him when she hurries past again, hurrying up two sets of ramps to the water treatment plant. It's safe to assume that, somewhere in that building, is Leo's drug stash, because in all their time staying in Megaton, he's never seen her even look at the plant. When she finally exits again, she's pocketing <em>something <em>and he can't tell what, but she's never struck him as the junkie type. Hell, any chems they'd picked up on the way here from Underworld had been sold practically the moment they'd walked through the corrugated metal gates. He isn't sure he trusts her if she's hiding things like that from him - he didn't need to protect someone while they dealt with their junkie fucking jitters - but it's not really appropriate to ask your employer about their drug habits.

Her returns home, but it's another two hours before Sallie shows up. She's lucky it's still early, so they can get moving. She looks worried, he notes; eyes shifty and slightly damp, hands shaking, the same flush in her cheeks that a child gets when she's caught doing something she shouldn't be. Part of him (a rather small part of him) wants to ask what she did, but it's the very last thing Sallie does before they leave Megaton for the trek to Rivet City, and he figures that she'll tell him eventually, or he'll _notice_, assuming it's drugs like he suspects it is.

And now, as they stand in front of the chief security officer of Rivet City, the vault girl is pouring on the charm, and Charon is doing nothing more than scowling as the security officer (he sounds vaguely like… A New Yorker, which is something that Charon hasn't heard since before Operation: Anchorage) snaps at the girl, who's trying to explain to him that she's only looking for her father. The security officer, Harkness, doesn't seem to be buying it, but he lets them in anyways, with the promise that if they do anything wrong, he'll shoot them. As they disappear through the door to the midship deck, all he hears is "Keep your dog on a leash!" and he has a half a mind push the asshole the fuck off this boat - but that would be homicide and he's pretty sure someone would notice that Harkness was missing.

* * *

><p>Even though it's two in the morning, there are still a surprising amount of people awake. The way they're looking at her, with barely concealed disgust… She doesn't get it, and she sure as shit doesn't fucking like it. Even the people in Megaton don't look at her like this; like she's some child-molesting, baby-murdering, bottom-of-the-godfuckingdamn-barrel scum. It isn't until she ends up at the Weatherly Hotel, attempting to purchase a hotel room from a no-go bucket of bolts that everything clicks into place. The robot looks oddly nervous, eye stalks twitching as it tries to phrase things in the least offensive way possible to avoid losing a comfortable atmosphere and a potential client… And then it has the nerve to ask if maybe she'd like to find a different place to stay with her companion. <em>Fuck<em>, how could she even forget that most people in the wasteland hated ghouls? Jericho only brought it up every fucking time he went into the saloon - he gave poor Gob hell. _Shoulda slipped something' in his drink, too. _she thinks sourly, her expression contorting into something wholly unpleasant as she eyes the robot. Maybe she should have paid attention all those times Jonas had tried to teach her how to hack Andy.

"Listen here, you useless heap of scrap metal," she starts, advancing. Charon clears his throat behind her and her shoulders sag; Instead of dealing with the robot now, she decides to simply count out twice the caps required for a two-day stay and slides them across the counter. "Just give me the key, scrap heap."

* * *

><p>He may be thankful that she treats him as an equal, that she doesn't pull back and wrinkle her nose in disgust when he stands too close, but that doesn't mean he gets it. Even when he was a smoothskin, people hadn't treated him an equal - most ghouls didn't either. God only knows that there had been more than a few ghouls in Underworld who'd thought him not only stupid, but mute. They were wrong - and they were in for a helluva surprise whenever they went back to give Gob's letter to Carol. He wouldn't hurt them, not seriously; He couldn't risk never being able to go into the only safe haven for ghouls left in the wastes.<p>

Charon is silent as they enter the room they've paid for. He drops his pack in the corner, turns just in time to catch Sallie's as she tosses it his way, and sets that on the floor as well. Despite the door being locked, he doesn't remove his armor - these locks were easy enough to pick, and he knows from experience. At this distance, he can tell that, while the wanderer is shaking, it's not drugs or alcohol or withdrawals. She's just nervous, pushing her shaking hands through the tangles of her thick, white hair (when had she taken it down? She never did that, did she?) and staring at the rusty wall. As he approaches the bed, the girl spins, her expression that of someone who was more than just a little distraught.

"I killed Moriarty."

* * *

><p><em>When she'd first taken those syringes from Leo's stash, she hadn't been planning on killing Moriarty - in fact, she'd planned on taking the whole stash and selling it. Instead, the moment she saw the line of med-x and psycho syringes in that drawer, that had been all she'd taken and she was out of there before she realized it. She shook like a leaf the whole walk to the saloon - she didn't have to worry about Moriarty being awake, it was still early and God was the only one there who was ever up this soon. When she slipped in, she saw Gob cast her a shy grin and she squared her shoulders, approaching the bar. "Which food stash's Moriarty's?"<em>

_Gob stared at her blankly. "Gob, I __**know**__ the sorry bastard makes you make him breakfast, can you just… Jesus fuck, is his breakfast ready?" The bartender nodded and motioned to a plate of Brahmin steak sitting on the counter, beside a short glass filled with what looked to be whiskey (his personal, pissless stash, the bastard). "Oh, thank fuck." She rooted through her pockets, placing two syringes each of med-x and psycho on the counter. God, was she ever happy that she'd paid attention when her father had explained what chems to avoid mixing - med-x mixed with psycho was going to mimic a natural death as close as possible. There was no way she'd be caught - she knew Church didn't have the same medical training, and she knew they sure as hell didn't have the equipment in Megaton that was required to test a liquid for drugs. This was foolproof. She emptied the contents of the syringes into the glass and gave it a quick stir, swallowing hard as she disposed of the used needles. _

_It was a whole hour and forty-five minutes before Moriarty came down for his breakfast, and the vault girl let out a triumphant sigh as the man downed his glass in one go. "I'll be seein' you around, Gob." was the last thing she said before slipping out of the saloon. _

_Shame, if she'd have stayed in Megaton another ten minutes, she would have been able to witness the death of that rotten Irishman. _


	5. Chapter Five: A Girl From Nowhere

**Aaand, here's another chapter. I'm trying to update a lot while I get the ball rolling, because I'll be without internet access for roughly a month starting somewhere around the ninth of next month, and then school starts in August, sometime around the twentieth. I'm still picking through quests to decide which ones I want to do, because the more I look at the list I've made, the more I'm not entirely happy with it. I'm also not entirely happy with how this chapter turned out, but, oh well. You win some, you lose some. Whenever I finish the story up, I'll probably go back and make edits until I'm happy with it.**

**I also plan on bringing Sallie and Charon back through Rivet City later on; to search for Pinkerton, deal with Mr. Lopez, speak with Dr. Zimmer about the android... All that fun stuff.  
><strong>

* * *

><p>Charon isn't expecting to hear that the murder of some shitbag saloon owner in a shitbag town is what's been causing Sallie to shake like a junkie. Honestly, he's a little bit disappointed. If anyone in Megaton deserved it, it was Colin Moriarty, the fucking human equivalent of that rat bastard Ahzrukhal. He doesn't understand why she seems scared about this - he's pretty fucking sure that Simms won't kick them out of Megaton if he figures out that Sallie is why the Irishman's dead. The ghoul almost snorts at the thought. <em>Simms is more likely to give her a fucking medal or some shit.<em> The fact that the vault girl still seems so nervous after spilling her guts about the whole thing is putting him on edge though. He hasn't felt much aside from rage and irritation in over two hundred years; He sure as fuck doesn't know how to deal with a girl, who can't possibly be older than twenty, freaking out. Doesn't know if he should push past the awkward, 'don't know what I'm doing' thing and just tell her things will be fine, or if he should just let her deal with things in her own way, even if that means she starts sobbing and screaming and the security in this rust bucket all come running to break the damn door down - because _obviously_, if there's a ghoul traveling with a human, he has to be raping or _something_ behind closed doors. Ignorant fucks.

So he just stands there at the foot of the bed, while Sallie starts quietly sobbing. He thought he was nervous when she was wild-eyed and trembling, going from wringing her hands to tugging on her hair and back again? The moment those tears started, something like fear began twisting in his stomach, and he decided that maybe he was sort of glad he'd been fucking brainwashed into being this way if it meant that he didn't have to feel like _this_. If normal people or ghouls or what-the fuck-ever dealt with this sort of feeling all the time, they deserved awards; This feeling was not pleasant or irritating. It was downright sickening, the same sort of knot in his stomach he remembers from all the radiation back when he was still human. On top of emotions he can't quite make sense of, there's the fact that he doesn't understand why exactly the smoothskin is so upset. Since she bought his contract and hauled his ass to Megaton (six months today for the former, roughly five for the latter), he thinks he's seen what she's capable of - they've spent most of their time working on research for that survival guide that fucking retarded smoothskin who owns the Craterside Supply wants to write, and Charon has seen his employer kill ruthlessly. He's seen her gut raiders like fish without a second thought, seen her flash unsuspecting wastelanders in secluded areas coy smiles before pressing a gun to their forehead and pulling the trigger if they stood in the way of something she needs.

He just doesn't understand. "Smoothskin…?"

* * *

><p>Sallie doesn't mean to start crying - shit, she <em>hates <em>crying with a passion. When Jonas used to tell her that she'd feel better after she had a good cry, he'd been fucking wrong. It just left her feeling stupid, with an awful pressure in her sinuses from all the sniffling and red-rimmed eyes like she'd been huffing a whole lot of jet. And this time is no different, but she at least feels like she has a valid reason to be crying with these great heaving breaths. When she'd killed Moriarty, she hadn't thought about the aftermath, not one bit. She just knew she was doing it for Gob, because he deserved something good in his life, and that something good damn well should have been the death of that filthy, liquored up old man who couldn't tell his ass from a hole in the goddamn ground if it wouldn't earn him some caps. But she didn't think.

Until just now, laying here on a bed in Rivet City with watery eyes, she didn't think about the fact that maybe Simms would suspect something - doesn't realize until now that maybe the sheriff will think Gob just finally cracked and killed the man who made his life so hopelessly miserable. Gob's not a violent man, but if Simms thinks Moriarty was murdered, that won't fucking matter. What will matter is who had access to the chems and the food and the liquor that killed the one man in town everyone hated; Sallie knows that if he thinks it's Gob, he'll kick him out. Only those stupid bomb worshippers like him being there, and only an incredibly tiny smattering of people don't mind him. She could have just lost her best friend his home - he'd have to go back to Underworld, and she knows he doesn't want to. She knows he wants to stay in Megaton, where he's carved out some semblance of a life, even if most people there aren't fond of him. There's nowhere else he can go, unless she can manage to convince someone at Tenpenny Tower to give him a room, and she knows that won't work, based solely on what she's heard about the stuffy tenants and the owner's affinity for gunning down ghouls or humans or whatever the fuck he wants if he decides he doesn't like the look of it. It's there or Rivet City, and fuck, she wouldn't wish anything like that on someone as sweet as Gob.

It's fifteen minutes straight that she's been sobbing when she finally perches her glasses atop her head and uses the sheets to dry her eyes. She shoots Charon a sheepish smile in an attempt to diffuse the tension of the situation, because she knows he's been standing there, confused, since this started and it's really all she can manage right now. "Sorry." Her voice is hoarse and she sounds like she's been smoking a half a pack a day with Butch down in the vault for the past ten years, nothing like what she usually sounds like, smooth and smoky like she should be singing jazz. "I feel bad, it just sort of hit me that… What if Simms figures it was… That somebody killed Moriarty? He'd probably blame Gob, kick him out of Megaton." She can't bring herself to mention that it would be more because he was a ghoul than because he was a supposed killer; Hell, she knows Lucas wouldn't even admit that much out loud since he was Mister goddamn Manners. _Charon probably thinks I'm a fucking idiot, sobbing over something like this - twenty in a week and cryin' like a baby. _With a sigh, she kicks off her boots and crawls into bed; Sleep is exactly what she fucking needs right now. At one point, as she drifts off, she thinks she may have motioned to the empty side of the bed and told Charon he could sleep, but she isn't sure.

* * *

><p>Charon didn't sleep last night. He figures the smoothskin should count herself lucky he's even in the same room as her - if she insists on sharing a goddamn bed when they travel, it's going to be a long ass time before he even considers it. He'll just sleep on the floor or in a chair or forgo the sleep entirely. Much simpler, leaves him feeling less conflicted when he wakes at every movement during the night to find her snuggling closer to him despite the fact that he reeks of leather and blood and gunpowder, and leaves him feeling less guilty because he doesn't have to worry about pushing the girl away from him as she whimpers in her sleep. The mistake was letting it happen when they stayed at Dukov's place after dealing with the molerat repellant (which was probably more fun that it should have been, but he'd always gotten a kick out of it when things exploded), when there had only been one spare bed. They should have just left, but Sallie had insisted, and he obviously couldn't say 'no' to his employer, like it or not. He'd nearly jumped out of his leathers when woke at half past four in the morning to find the wanderer tucked against his side, her face buried in his shoulder.<p>

He turns his back when Sallie changes her clothes, exchanging her customary merc charmer outfit for some pale pink dress in a style he hasn't seen since before the bombs dropped. She's probably trying to look presentable or something, for when they go ask around about the history of this shitheap, and for when they go to speak to Doctor Li about the whereabouts of one James Harper. When he turns to face her again, he raises one ruined brow and tosses her a bottle of water and a box of those nasty Dandy Boy Apples that he can't fucking stand, but she can't seem to get enough of. They have more than enough caps between them to afford a fresh breakfast, but it's much easier to eat their own stash of food on the off-chance that they find something worth carrying that wouldn't otherwise fit in their packs. It wouldn't be surprising, the way Sallie collects twisted bits of scrap metal to take to Winthrop upon their arrival at Underworld - in just the three days it had taken them to get from Megaton to Rivet City, they've collected something like forty bits of metal that nobody else would cast a second glance at or Sallie tore out of a robot or an old Corvega.

When they spend the first half of the day dodging dirty looks and interrogating locals about the history of Rivet City, he's less than happy. The citizens either glance his way and fix Sallie with a dirty look before refusing to answer her questions, or they yap for twenty minutes straight about how they were 'so important' to Rivet City coming together, despite just arriving. The only sap here who is of any help is Seagrave Holmes, that idiot running around in a fucking motorcycle helmet - he points the pair in the direction of the broken-off bow, to find the home of some old man who only Seagrave actually seems to remember - and that's only after Sallie mentions, in a dry tone, that Vera Weatherly spoke oh-so fucking highly of him. It's too easy to read some people out here, the way they stutter over words and flush at the mention of some other idiot.

* * *

><p>She isn't impressed by Doctor Li. The doctor seems nice enough, but even at nineteen, nearly twenty, Sallie has no trouble being able to tell that the woman is only faking kindness in case she manages to find her father, so there's not an unkind word to be said about her. Maybe it's just her, but it sure as fuck seems, as she interrogates Li, that the woman has some sort of feelings for James, and it makes her more than a little bit uncomfortable. Part of that is that it's always strange to think of anyone having feelings for one of your parents; The other part is that she doesn't fully trust this woman. But she's feeding her the information she's asking for, the truth about everything before the vault and her mother dying. It's when she asks about where her father is now that Madison starts stumbling over her words. It seems like, maybe, she's trying to give a believable answer, so she doesn't send some poor little vaultie to her doom, especially if she's the daughter of James Harper, but Sallie doesn't give a shit, and the longer the doctor rants, the more irritated she grows. She wants nothing more than to grab this woman by the neck and slam her face into one of the tables surrounding them, but instead, she grits her teeth and lets her fingernails bite into the palms of her hands.<p>

"Well, you see, I'm not entirely _sure _where James went… He mention-"

"Will you just fucking tell me where my father went?" Her voice is several octaves higher than usual in her frustration, tone sharp as she glares at the scientist. It took her long enough to get to this point, and she really doesn't fucking need some know-it-all scientist who's as the persona of polite little vault dweller that the white-haired girl has been putting on all goddamn day. She's been out of the vault for a full fucking year, and she's done things in that time that her ghoul merc doesn't know about, just to prepare herself for whatever might happen while she looks for her father. Sure, Charon's seen her pick off raiders with ease, seen her kill wastelanders she's never met for the clothes on their backs and the weapons in their makeshift holsters just so she can make some cash (she was basically putting those poor bastards out of their misery anyways, with their tattered Brahmin-skin outfits and ten millimeter pistols in such poor condition that she doesn't think that a bullet would even pierce Charon's leather armor); He doesn't know about her meeting the two inhabitants of Girdershade and returning two days later to put bullets in their skulls from a distance. He doesn't know that she robbed the town of Arefu blind with little more than a stealth boy equipped before she'd gone off to find Ian West; He sure as fuck doesn't know about Bryan Wilks approaching her near the Super Duper Mart and asking her to find his father, and the fact that, instead, she goes to Grayditch and picks through the houses and shacks there before deciding that she'll go back to deal with all those fucking fire-breathing ants some other time.

He only knows the good.

* * *

><p>He's not even slightly surprised to find a rather large group of super mutants inhabiting the Jefferson Memorial. What he is surprised about is the ease with which Sallie manages to hack into the turret control system, sending the mutants into a frenzy as they alternate between screaming at the turret and shooting at it. It's enough to distract the lot of them, giving his employer the time to lob a few frag grenades into the room and slam the doors shut. Both of them know that it won't kill the mutants - but weakening them or crippling a limb will on a few them will make things easier, and that's all they can ever really ask for out here. When they open the doors again, the mutants turn on them, roaring with rage and swinging poorly-constructed weapons that are merely two by fours studded with nails. Between the two of them, the dispatch the mutants - there were roughly eight, total, and while Sallie looks proud of herself, it's Charon who has dealt most of the killing shots. There are three more mutants in the rotunda, and he makes quick work of them before following Sallie up the stairs. He finds her there, listening to holotapes she's found, and he can tell by the look in her eyes that it's her father speaking.<p>

"Let's keep looking." It's said like it's a suggestion, but Charon can't quite bring himself to tell her no - both because she's his employer and because there's something in those cool grey eyes that's completely unfamiliar. Even when she was crying in the hotel room two nights ago, her eyes didn't look this sad, like what she wanted was just out of reach and she couldn't quite remember why she wanted it in the first place. Since she bought his contract, he's seen her angry, happy, drunk, but he's never seen her sad. He's pretty sure he doesn't like it. There's still the sub-basement to check, and he refuses to let the vault girl lead, on the off-chance that there's a whole fucking _settlement _of mutants down there. There are two, right off the bat, hidden in a room where they find more holotapes that Sallie simply shoves into her pack, waiting for a safe place to sit and listen to them. There aren't many rooms in the sub-basement, and they only find one more mutant, plus one of those fucking creepy centaurs wandering one lone stretch of hallway. There's what appears to be a bedroom near the end of the hall, and there are at least five more holotapes on the tables inside.

* * *

><p>Sallie doesn't bother listening to the tapes in order, even though they're clearly labeled by number. All she knows is that now, she only has two left and she still has yet to cry - numbers ten and zero. Ten tells her where to go next - some vault numbered 112, in a garage in the ass end of the goddamn wasteland. If the data on her pip-boy regarding the location is correct, it's startlingly close to where she hid the bodies of Ronald Laren and Sierra Petrovita, like someone was ever going to fucking find them anyways. She shakes the thought off, and forces herself to listen to the final entry.<p>

"_Well, here we are again. Project Purity and me. It's been close to twenty years since my last entry. Since I left all of this behind to make a life for my daughter. We spent all that time in Vault 101, tucked away from the rest of the world. It wasn't perfect, but it was safe, and that's all I could have hoped for. Now, my daughter is a grown woman. Beautiful, intelligent, confident, just like her mother. And as hard as it was to admit it, she doesn't need her daddy anymore."_

A frown tugs at her features. That was bullshit, all of it. It wasn't safe - Alphonse was out of his fucking gourd; She wasn't beautiful or confident or intelligent - at least, she didn't feel like it. And she sure as fuck needed her dad. She didn't have anyone in the wastes, not really. Of course, she had Gob in Megaton, and she had Charon until he up and told her that he wanted someone else to have his contract, and she supposed that she had Carol in Underworld… But that was nothing like having her father. Maybe it was selfish, but she just didn't give a fuck. Project Purity had no point - people were fine without clean water. Look at her: she'd gone and got irradiated as fuck for Moira, and now she'd heal the moment her radiation climbed past four hundred. And it healed the ghouls! It was just... She was frustrated and scared and she missed her father, even if she kept saying he was a deadbeat or an asshole or anything else.

She stood abruptly. "We're going to Underworld to give Carol her letters and sell some of this shit, give Winthrop all his shitty scrap metal, and then we're going to find vault one twelve."


	6. Chapter Six: For Good

**And here's yet another. Most of next chapter (which I'm hoping will be much longer than all those preceding it) will be dealing with finding James, getting back to Rivet City, and _either _arriving at Jefferson Memorial or dealing with the beginnings of The Pitt DLC. I haven't decided yet. I'm also not entirely sure which choice Sallie will make in the Pitt, since the whole quest line is very much morally grey - leave suggestions in the reviews, as far as kidnapping Marie or siding with Lord Ashur.  
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* * *

><p>By the time they've reached the Museum of History, Sallie's calmed down some. She's deleted all the journal entries from her pip-boy and thrown the holotapes into the Potomac. She knows that if she doesn't, she'll just keep listening and listening and listening, caught in an endless loop of growing angry and deleting the files, only to re-upload them and listen again. As someone who already lacks all certainty that anything she's living is real, she doesn't think that would be the best idea; The fact that not only her best friend, but her surrogate mother (for lack of a better term) <em>and <em>her current companion are ghouls doesn't really help, either. Quite frequently, she finds herself wondering if maybe her whole life is a series of creepy simulations, meant to test her sanity... But despite that, she's fairly certain that, despite all these completely unrealistic situations and the stress and the fact that she can gun someone down or gut them if she gets close enough, but can't deal with hand-to-hand combat no matter how many issues of Pugilism Illustrated she finds, this is all real.

Plus, all her memories from the vault, they're too realistic and imperfect for them to be fake. She clearly remembers spending a lot of time with him despite the way he treated Amata, and despite their more physical disagreements, one of which had earned him a surprisingly solid right hook that had knocked a few of the boy's teeth down his own throat. He always meant well, even if he was abrasive and violent and a chain smoker by sixteen; She thinks she might be the only one who knew it. The Tunnel Snakes sure didn't - between Wally Mack, that fucking psychopath; Paul Hannon, who'd never been anything short of sweet before he'd turned fifteen; and Freddie Gomez who was too awkward and sincere to warrant any of the treatment that gang got... Well, Butch didn't exactly have a good reputation for meaning well. But she'd been close to him, for a while - she'd trusted him almost as much as she'd trusted Amata, and he'd never given her a reason not to, even if everyone else thought he was a no-good alcoholic like his mother. She smiles fondly. She still has the boy's jacket, tucked at the bottom of her pack. By no means had they been lovers or anything like that (well, aside from one night, but that was just to get rid of any awkwardness when it came to losing their virginities), but... The jacket reminded her of home, of a better time.

She pays Carol for three days in a roughly put together two-bed 'suite' ahead of time (she knows it's not ready when they get there, because Greta ends up just setting up a cot in the room Sallie usually takes to avoid moving things around). When she moves to drop her bag on the cot, Charon tries to stop her, but she simply holds up a hand to silence him. "Charon, you're a fucking _giant_. Take the bed, I can handle a few days on a cot that you _won't_ fit on." Ignoring the ghoul's protests and rolling her eyes, she digs through her pack to find the box of scrap metal that she's collected for Winthrop, along with Carol's letters from Gob. "You can stay here, get some food, if you wanna."

Obviously, she goes to Carol first, watching her face light up when she's presented with those envelopes. With a bright smile, she tells her that, if she's done by then, she'll take the letters back to Gob when she leaves - Megaton's not far out of her way, and she feels like she is obligated to go back and check on Gob, anyways. It isn't like it's a bother.

* * *

><p>It's the final day of their stay in Underworld, and he's following after Sallie, glancing around at the dirty walls that he's glad are no longer a fucking constant in his life. He doesn't notice the smoothskin come to a stop in front of Underworld Outfitters, almost causing him to run into her. From inside the shop, he can hearing Tulip scrambling to find who knows what, but the moment she finds it, Sallie's in the room to accept it.<p>

"Happy birthday, smoothskin! It's not much, just a handful of stimpaks and some of those apples I know you like so much." For a few silent moments, Charon is puzzled, to say the least. A birthday seems like something someone would mention, even in passing, and the fact that Sallie has obviously mentioned it to Tulip at some point causes mild irritation; Part of him doubts that the ghoul shopkeeper would even acknowledge the vaultie if she knew what the girl was capable of. Most of them wouldn't, they hold themselves to such high moral standards. They're not as high and mighty as they like to pretend they are. He hears Sallie yelp out her thanks, nearly knocking the box out of the female ghoul's hands as she embraces her. Why does she have to hug everyone? Christ. It's weird enough that she spends almost of all of her time outside of Megaton with ghouls, but to keep hugging them like it didn't even computer with her that they smelled of old leather and older blood was just fucking wrong - she should just be happy among her own kind. He's voiced these concerns before, told her to be wary of humans knowing she was in so deep with the ghouls, but she brushed him off. _"You're still people," _she'd said, _"in fact, I think most ghouls are more human than, well... Humans."_

Even now, he's not sure he understands that comment.

* * *

><p>They make their stop in Megaton three days later. She doesn't stop to drop her pack at her house - she heads straight to the saloon. She's more than a little bit surprised to Lucas Simms there; The only other time she's seen him in there is when she turned in that pulse charge from that Burke asshole. "Is, uh... Is Gob here?" She hopes she sounds more confident than she feels, because she's just arrived and her hands are already sweating like mad.<p>

"He's right upstairs." The sheriff is silent for a beat before he leans on the counter. "Still asleep, I reckon, since it's nine in the morning and Moriarty ain't here to knock him around for sleeping in." Sallie is sure she looks startled, but she does her best to keep her calm as she raises an eyebrow.

"And what, pray tell, happened to that rotten asshole?" She's perched on a stool at the bar now, her pack dropped beside her, even just taking a seat makes her feel so much calmer that it's ridiculous.

Simms looks, briefly, like he doesn't believe that she doesn't know already, but he shakes his head and pushes on. "Keeled over a couple weeks ago. The deed automatically went to me - I've been waiting for you to come back, actually." Now, she notices that there's a sheet of paper on the counter beside Simms, and she's confused, tilting her head and trying to get a good look at the paper as it's lifted. "Thought maybe you'd want the place."

Why exactly he'd think that, Sallie doesn't know, but she knows that, even if they pool their caps together, Gob and Nova won't be able to afford the deed to this place - she doesn't know what Moriarty used to do with the day's caps, but there's no way they'll ever find them. "How much... Uh, how much will I have to put down on this place, if I say yes? And I mean, I'm gone so often... Can Gob... Can Gob co-sign this thing?" She knows she looks put out when the sheriff chuckles, but she can't help it. There's got to be some kind of catch to this or something.

"Thousand caps, and that's mostly just so you can get new inventory in here. Gob told me all about... The still." He slips the contract over to her, along with an old pen, "And Gob's already signed."

She can almost cry as she scribbles her name on the deed, she's so relieved, and she's glad that the saloon is going to be in good hands now. Booze that's as clean as can be managed in the wasteland, and good that's as fresh as they can get their hands on - hell, they'll practically put the Brass Lantern out of business, once people realize there's no piss in the booze. There's a door opening upstairs and then Gob is coming down and the twenty year old is practically throwing herself at him, almost knocking the poor old ghoul down. She's just glad Gob's not kicked out of Megaton and Moriarty's dead and they can just go on with their lives; Gob being the lovable bartender at the saloon and her being the carefree, not-so-lone wanderer. Behind her, she knows Simms is torn between disgust and confusion and amusement, but he says nothing aside from "I'll leave you to talk this over," before he leaves.

"Gob. Gob, you're free. _Free_."

* * *

><p>"Where have you been, smoothskin?" Charon rumbles when the front door finally swings open again, looking up from the table where he's cleaning his shotgun. She looks like she's been crying, but there's a triumphant smirk twisting her features and she swells with pride as she drops her pack beside the door.<p>

"Getting some things straightened out with Gob." He looks disbelieving. "No, really. Go out, look towards the saloon sign." With a skeptical look, he stands carefully placing his shotgun on the table, and exits the house. Leaning against the railing, he squints at the sign above the saloon - it's obvious that 'Moriarty's' has been crossed out, but what he isn't expecting to see is 'Gob + Sallie's' scrawled in yellow paint." Guess when Moriarty passed, Simms decided I deserve the place. Gob's co-owner."

He nods, looking from the sign, to the girl, and back again. "This is... What you wanted." Sallie lets out a sharp bark of laughter, causing him to swing his head back around to look at her.

"Hardly. I just wanted Moriarty dead. Gob's free now. He gets about forty percent of the profits from the saloon, figure that's fair since he's here all the time. Twenty percent to split between employees and inventory... You and I split the last forty even between us." she explains wearily, and it's obvious it took them a long time to reach this conclusion - he's fairly certain that, sap that he is, it took a long time to convince Gob to take as much as forty percent. _Probably still feels guilty about it. _"Still don't know what Nova's gonna do, though. She always talked about how she was gonna go out, see the world'nd shit once she'd paid off her debt, but she's so deep in a jet inhaler that she'll have to spend any caps she has to flush her system at Doc's place before she can ever leave." The tone of her voice suggests that she feels worse for Gob for having to deal with the former prostitute than she does for Nova herself, and this vaguely amuses Charon.

"Charon... If I ever manage to find a way to get you out of your contract... Would you want to be free?"

Charon's not sure he knows the answer to this question, so he simply gapes at the vault girl, thoroughly confused. He knows she'll never find a way to get him out of it, but the fact that she's brought this up makes him wonder if she wants to be rid of him, and he voices as such.

"Oh, no, no, no, no! I don't... Charon, if it weren't for you, I'd be twice dead by now. I was just wondering if you'd prefer being... Free, to dealing with some twenty year old chick out of the vault who can't fight to save her life."

He nods slightly, purses his ruined lips as he ponders the question. "I do not know, smoothskin." But in that moment, he's pretty sure his answer is no.


	7. Chapter Seven: One Way or Another

**This did… Not come out exactly as I'd planned. In fact, I'd originally planned on having Sallie go through each of Betty's tasks, earning all that negative karma, because I'd kind of wanted her to have some sort of mental breakdown when she finally got out of the lounger. Instead, I opted for her telling off her father, because, well… I really wish there were more speech options allowing you to do just that in the game - at least, more realistically. Let's get real here: whether or not the world needs clean water, you're going to be pretty damn upset if your dad bails and you have to fight your way out of your home, right?**

**As previously stated, reviews regarding the choices you think Sallie will make in the Pitt would be appreciated - I'd like to have an outside point of view on this.  
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* * *

><p>Sallie uses the next two days to relax. It's not going to do her any good if she finds her father and she's so wound up that she just shoots him straight through the heart. He doesn't need to know about anything but the good things she's done; That's why she's glad that's all Three Dog ever talks about on his godforsaken radio station. She doesn't need her father to be disappointed in her after listening to the radio for just a few minutes, because things like that are why she's so secretive about the terrible things she's done. Granted, she could gun down a whole town, women and children and the elderly and all, and still be considered the messiah of the wastes; People have killed more for less. It just wouldn't make her comfortable if people aside from Charon saw the darker side of her, the side she wants to keep buried, even if it's still not as bad as most people out here. When you're raised in a vault, you want to rebel, but having the chance to do all that and more is sort of overwhelming, and there's a large part of her still sticking to her metaphorical guns, the same ones she had down in the vault that kept her from killing everyone. How her father managed to embed a moral code so deep into her psyche that even just over a year in the wastes had only barely changed things, she was never going to understand. She knows that she'll never want to; It won't matter. It's not like she'll have kids to do the same thing to - she prefers animals, and finding a pet out here would be damn near impossible to manage.<p>

Weapons are repaired (and hers require surprisingly little upkeep, now that Charon's around to do maintenance rather routinely), armor is patched, food and medicine are boxed and shoved in a series of lunchboxes that she's collected on her travels and placed in their packs. She's as ready as she's ever going to be, but there's an unpleasant bundle of nerves in her stomach telling her that she should just give up and forget she's ever even had a father. It takes every ounce of self-confidence she has and then some to convince herself to ignore those nerves. God, does she ever want to give up and act like she was born out here in the wastes to some nameless woman and a faceless man, but now that she has everything ready and she has Charon to watch her back, she`s too prepared not to go. The familiar weight of her modified shotgun isn't even a comfort anymore by the time they reach what she thinks is somewhere just past the halfway mark; She's checked to see how close they are, if they should find a safe place for the night and realized just how close they are to Evergreen Mills. How she didn't notice it when she first put the coordinates in, she isn't aware, but now, swears are falling from her lips like she was born to speak them. "I'm a dead man walkin' here, but that's the least of all my fears." she sings softly, sighing. The sun is starting to set, and they really only have two choices now - pick up the pace and hopefully reach Smith Casey's by sunrise, or search for shelter.

"Should we keep going, or set up camp?" If only Rockopolis were closer. At this point, she's pretty sure the only safe building in the area is the old RobCo Facility, and the way she sees it, if she's going to go that far out of her way, she may as well get a room in Tenpenny Tower and figure out a way to wrangle Charon inside. There's not even a settlement nearby, that she knows of, but there are still a lot of places she hasn't been and coordinates she hasn't collected, so there could be.

"We should push on, smoothskin. I do not like the look of this area." She nods wordlessly, the ghost of a vague smile on her lips as she turns and continues in the correct direction.

* * *

><p>When they reach the garage, it's five in the morning, and he says it before Sallie ever glances at her pip-boy, causing her to narrow her eyes at him when she checks the time and he's correct. "How did you know that?"<p>

He chuckles, a deep rumble. "Training, smoothskin. Training." He doesn't mention that a handful of years in the military had also helped to hone the skill; It's not necessary and he doesn't like to talk about it. The ghoul doesn't think it's worth it to mention a time when he was even less of a person than he is now - it would just make his employer angry, like she always gets when people judge him or her for being with him. He still doesn't quite get how she ticks, why some things bother her and others don't. He doesn't get how she can stomach seeing animal abuse despite being a self-proclaimed 'animal person', but flinches at child abuse or spousal abuse; He doesn't know about her past, though, and maybe there's something there that would clue him in. _Doubtful. Vault dwellers are fucking batshit. She's probably just crazy. _It's a reasonable assumption, considering her overreactions and the way she'll grit her teeth and bite her tongue in an attempt to remain polite to get an answer from someone, rather than simply beating it out of them like he would. She has more patience than he could ever even pretend to hope to have - hell, she has more _skin _than he could ever pretend to hope to have as well. Not that it matters; She's still his employer and he's still not entirely sure he trusts her, even if her buying his contract was one of the best things that's ever happened to him. He was hardly willing to admit that, anyways.

The inside of the building is infested with mole rats, and while he's completely ready to land one well-placed shot on each of them, Sallie is having none of it. She gently presses him out of her way and simply herds the freakish looking things the fuck out of the building. Really, she was just so full of fucking surprises that he can't believe it sometimes, even if it doesn't surprise him so much as irritate him that she can learn to herd some of the ugliest creatures in the wasteland, but she can't learn to be any better with hand-to-hand or melee combat. It just seems to get better and better, as the girl digs through every box or crate in the place, alternating between shoving things into his pack and her own, singing along to a song that he can almost hear playing in his head. She's been singing the same song for hours now, little snippets of it every so often, like she'd grown tired of the silence but didn't know what to start a conversation about or if he'd even answer her; He knows the tune, he knows the words, and he knows that if he weren't a ghoul, his vocal cords completely destroyed by the radiation, that he would sing along, _could _sing along. Instead, he just stands back while his employer putters about the building, grabbing things here and there before she finally drops her pack. She's locked the door, so there's no way anyone's getting in, but there's only one makeshift bed here, and not enough for him to make one for himself.

He takes first watch. It consists mostly of him flipping through a copy of 'Tumblers Today' that had been lying at the bottom of the safe near where Sallie now slept, eyes occasionally darting over to the white-haired wanderer to make sure she was still fine, still breathing and merely asleep. He wakes her at eight, like he promised he would, and the only reason he even lays down is because there's a stern note to her voice when she tells him to try and get some sleep that he clings to, it's so like she's ordering him.

* * *

><p>When Charon wakes, she's sprawled out on the counter, fiddling with her pip-boy. "It's twelve. 'bout time you woke up, sleepyhead." She'd given him four hours; Four hours that she uses to study one of her four different issues of Pugilism Illustrated on the off-chance that she'd need it down in the vault. When she earns a grunt and nothing else in reply, she rolls her eyes and pushes herself up and off of the counter. She's been trying to convince herself that she's ready to do this for the past twenty minutes, and she's not entirely sure it worked, but she stands tall and proud nonetheless as they march into the other room and she presses the only switch she finds, hoping it will do <em>something<em>. When the floor opens up and stairs are made visible, she breaths a sigh of relief, surprised when she does so. She expects to be disappointed, but she's not; It's like now that she's so close, she knows she can't go back and she can't do anything other than look forward to getting her father back, even if he's been no good to her for a year.

They pass through a series of doors, and when the final one opens, she lets out a high-pitched scream, slapping a hand over her mouth as Charon jumps in front of her, ready to defend his employer.

"Greetings, vault residents! My calculations state that you are two hundred three point three years late. Please proceed to the nearest tranquility lounger. If you have lost your vault-issued suit, I am qualified to distribute another."

Puzzled, Sallie glances at Charon before accepting the suit from the robot - the fact that it isn't hostile is making her nervous, since every other goddamn robobrain she's found out here has been. It feels like it's a trap, but she doesn't voice her concerns. Instead, she just forgets all semblance of modesty, now that she's so close to accomplishing her goal, and strips out of her merc charmer outfit, tugging on her newly-issued vault suit. She grimaces - she remembers exactly why she hated these things, but there's no going back now, as she packs up her things and continues into the halls. Charon is left behind, unsure if he's really just witnessed what he thinks he has, or if he's finally going feral and it's just starting to manifest itself through hallucinations. With a shake of his head, he follows.

"What the fuck _are _these things?" The room at the bottom of the stairs is full of things shaped like eggs, and when she peers through the glass, she can see people. They look vaguely like they're sleeping, but there are screens in front of them, playing images that she can't quite make out, and the people… They look like they've been here a whole hell of a lot longer than they should have been. She checks a terminal in front of one of the pods, fingers dancing over the keyboard. "'Tranquility lounger', eh? Sounds like a load of Brahmin shit." she mutters sourly as she begins to move around the console in the center of the room, reading the statistics on the screen and hoping for some sort of clue. One for a 'T. Dithers' mentions inconsistent readings and anomalies, but it isn't the one that catches her eye. There's one with an unknown inhabitant in it, and when she scurries over to investigate, her eyes widen and she begins banging on the glass, shouting as tears spring to her eyes. "Dad? Dad! Daddy!" By the time Charon manages to pull her away, the tears are flowing freely and her hands feel bruised, but she's made up her mind. Whatever these stupid fucking 'tranquility lounger' things are for… She's going in there, and she's going to deal with whatever or whoever was in there. She straightens herself out marching around the room until she finds a pod that's unoccupied and she's bouncing from foot to foot as she waits for it to open it.

As she takes her seat and settles in, she casts one final, apprehensive look at Charon, who looks like he disapproves of her plan entirely. He probably does. "Charon, if I don't get out of this…" She takes a deep breath, closing her eyes for a few moments in an attempt to help herself focus. "Your contract is in the safe at home. Tell Wadsworth, tell Simms, tell Gob… You're free."

"You will make it out, smoothskin. Do not worry."

* * *

><p><em>When Sallie opens her eyes again, everything is wrong. Her world is suddenly black and white, and she's in the middle of some suburb she's never seen before, and… She's short. Shorter than normal, anyways, and when she looks down at her hands, she realizes everything is small, like she's a child again. At that realization, she checks her hair, half-hoping it will be restored to the same lustrous black it had been before it had turned white, but it's not. She shouldn't be surprised. Fisting her hands in the stupid, bland little dress she's wearing, she glances around, waiting for who knows what to jump out of nowhere and start attacking her, but even as she takes tentative steps forward, towards the center of the area, a grassy little playground, it doesn't happen. Something about this whole place is just bad news, and she knows it. There's a little girl there, watering flower, but there's something shifty about her, and if she hadn't beckoned her over in the first place, Sallie knows she wouldn't speak to her. <em>

"_Have you seen my father?" She doesn't like the way the little girl's lips twist into a smirk at that; It's creepy and evil and if she had a gun, this little girl wouldn't have a face. _

"_Maybe I have, maybe I haven't. You'll have to play with me to find out." She doesn't want to play, especially not with this creepy little fuck - instead, she just wants to scream and cry and possibly kill something, someone. "The first part of our game - make Timmy Neusbaum cry!" _

_What the fuck kind of game is this? "Are you fucking kidding me? I just want to fi-"_

"_Now, now. Run along, all in good time." Grinding her teeth together, the white-haired girl marches off to the only other child she's seen in this place and leans against his lemonade stand with a wide smile. _

"_Are you Timmy?" When the boy nods, she carefully motions to the girl in the grass, rolling her eyes. "Do you know who she is?"_

"_That's Betty. She's weird. And she's mean." Ah, the simplicity of children. She almost misses this. _

"_I bet. Get this: she wants me to make you __**cry**__, Timmy. But I'm not mean like she is, and I don't want to." From "there on, she tries just about everything she can think of to get him to cry - bribes him with candy and cookies and coming over to play, but he obviously doesn't trust her, and she sighs. She didn't want to have to do this, but apparently it's necessary. Leaning forward conspiratorially, she motions him closer. "Did you know your parents are getting' a divorce because of you, Timmy? They just can't handle the stress - your daddy wants to send you to military school, but your mom says that she wants you to stay here. You're __**ruining **__their marriage." It has the desired effect, and the small boy begins sobbing loudly before running into his house, almost tripping over something in his lawn on the way there. She feels guilty as she returns to Betty; The girl is clapping and it's obvious that she's some sort of sadist or __**something**__. _

"_Perfect! Wonderfully executed!" Betty is still clapping, and Sallie wants nothing more than to rip the girl's hands off and paste them to her eyelids - see her try and clap __**then**__. "The next part of our game… I want you to break up the marriage of Janet and Roger Rockwell." _

_She nods, ashamed of herself, and wanders off to find the pair in question, when she's approached by some old woman who's positively frothing at the mouth, she's so freaked out. She's babbling about this being a simulation and how none of them belong here and a failsafe in an abandoned house. The girl quirks a brow at the older woman, nodding at everything she says. Of course it's a goddamn simulation, that much seems obvious - but it doesn't matter. There's a failsafe, and she's going to figure it out. Scanning the area, it's easy to pick out which house is abandoned - the lawn is unkempt, there's no car in the driveway, the windows are shadowed, dark. With a knowing smirk, she bolts to the house._

_It's disappointing inside - there's nothing here, no failsafe terminal. She steps forward, kicking at an old pitcher on the table and yelping in surprise when it doesn't move or shatter, but makes a noise. That was unexpected. __**Maybe the others…**__ She darts around the room, tapping at different items until she has a mental list of the things that make noise. She still doesn't know how to activate the failsafe, so she just starts hitting the objects until they form a familiar melody. __**That little shit! **__The tune Betty was whistling, that had to be it! After that, Sallie moves swiftly, hitting the radio, the pitcher, the gnome, pitcher again, the cinder block, the creepy-ass gnome again, and finally, the empty soda bottle. A terminal appears, and she feels air rush from her lungs in relief. There's multiple entries, one about 'Toucan Lagoon' and 'Slalom Chalet', along with an entry on the failsafe - information on it and how and why to activate it and she is simultaneously intrigued and horrified by everything she's read. She swallows hard, and clicks on 'activate failsafe'._

_When she exits the house again, there are Chinese soldiers everywhere, gunning down the citizens of Tranquility Lane but miraculously avoiding not only her and Betty, but a dog that she hadn't noticed before. She marches towards Betty, a snarl tearing its way out of her throat when she reaches her and grabs her by the collar of her dress. "Now, do you know where my father is, you __**fucking soulless automaton**__?" All it took was reading the entries on that terminal to realize that Betty was Braun, and now she wasn't going to put up with the bullshit anymore. _

"_What have you done? You've activated the failsafe! I'll be stuck here alone, forever!" Sallie gives Betty a rough shake, glaring, and the man disguised as a little girl relents. "The dog. He's been there all along." _

_The… Dog? She looks at the dog then, and it looks strangely like it's nodding at her. She drops Betty. "So, I can just… Leave? Will I… Will I get my dad back?"_

_Betty sounds entirely unenthused now, and she motions vaguely to a door that has appeared. "Yes, fine, leave. Go."_

* * *

><p>It's been hours - Charon doesn't know how many, because he's not the one with that goddamn computer on his arm and there's no sun in this stupid hole in the ground - when Sallie's tranquility lounger swings open. He's not expecting it, but he feels relieved that she really did make it through. He'd only spent the last few hours seriously doubting if his words to her had been true or not. When she stumbles out of the lounger, obviously forgetting it was on a raised platform, he catches her, setting her on her feet and keeping his hands on her shoulders for a few moments before he finally lets her go, sure she can stand. "I told you that would make it, smoothskin. I did not doubt it for a minute." True. He'd doubted it for much longer.<p>

"Sallie? Sallie, you saved my life!" he hears from behind him, and he takes a few steps to the side to let the vault dwellers embrace. He feels awkward as he watches this, kind of like he's witnessing something that he's not supposed to see as the vault girl sobs into her father's chest. "You were supposed to stay in the vault." And that's when everything comes unhinged and his employer is tearing away from her father, frowning.

"_Excuse me_? I was supposed to sta- They fucking _killed _Jonas; The overseer went fucking batty after you left. They _tried _to kill _me_! I _had _to leave, you, you… You bastard!" The tears are starting again, and he can't bring himself to do anything more than stand there like he's blind, deaf and dumb; He's still baffled by tears. "You could have brought me with you, I could have helped, and you wouldn't have been stuck here, and-"

* * *

><p>James sighs. He knows his daughter has a lot of patience, so the fact that she's exploding now must mean she's been keeping everything bottled up - something she should <em>know <em>is a bad idea. After all, she did place as the vault psychologist after taking the G.O.A.T. But if he had known that all of these things would happen as a result of him leaving the vault… Well, he probably never would have wandered in there looking for safety in the first place, let alone wandered back out. Even for the greater good.

"Sweetheart. _Sweetheart_, calm down. Deep breaths. That's good, good job. Now, do you understand why I left?"

"Chasing fucking pipe dreams?" He really wishes she would stop swearing, and that she'd quit breaking eye contact in favour of looking at - a ghoul. A massive ghoul, standing there like he honestly didn't know what was going on.

"Who… Who is this, sweetheart?"

"He's Charon, he's a mercenary, he's my friend, the end; Don't try and change the subject!" _Sallie has her mother's fire, that's for sure. Catherine had never been scared to put me in my place either. _he muses wryly, jerked out of his reverie when the white-haired girl snaps something at him that he doesn't quite catch.

He's still concerned about the ghoul, but that's the least of his concerns right now. "I left the vault to finish Project Purity. It was your mother's dream to get clean, pure water to the entire wasteland. It's what's right-"

"Did you stop to think that maybe it was _right_ to stay with your _daughter_?" Sallie snaps, arms crossing over her chest as she subconsciously takes a few steps closer to Charon. "Or given her some warning or something?" It's obvious that she's biting back some other remark, and honestly, he's glad she's biting her tongue this once. He's been in that pod for months; He can't just jump headfirst back into being a father.

"But that's the great thing, sweetheart - you can come with me _now_! Come with me back to Rivet City, we'll get the rest of them together and we'll get the purifier ru-"

His daughter is holding up her hand, effectively shutting him up. "No, Dad. Not today. I'm not going back to Rivet City right now. I want… I want to help you, but there are things I need to do first, okay? So _you _head back to Rivet fucking City and dealing with all your little scientist friends. Get them ready for any possible thing that could happen, and I'll… I'll fucking meet you there eventually."

* * *

><p>She doesn't hug her father before he leaves, just tells him that she'll see him soon enough. For a few minutes, she just stands there, taking deep breaths and resisting the urge to punch something. It's stressful, being the messiah of the wastes, and even more stressful when you finally find what you're looking for. When she exits Smith Casey's with Charon, there's a familiar crackling on her pip-boy that always means a distress signal. It's from a man named Wernher, who's apparently an escaped slave or something, from somewhere called the Pitt. With squared shoulders, she looks at Charon. "Let's go."<p>

"And I will follow."


	8. Chapter Eight: Not Falling

**And here's the beginnings of The Pitt. I'm playing through this quest right now, just so I can get things as accurate as can be managed. Covering all the unmarked quests and such, meeting some of the Pitt raiders in Uptown, you get the idea. I'm fairly certain you're not actually supposed/allowed to bring a companion with you (I don't currently **_**have **_**a companion, so I'm not sure), but whatever. I do what I want.**

**I'm also getting into a slightly more regular posting rhythm, rather than typing up 1,000 to 2,000 word chapters and throwing them up here within hours of each other. I'm trying to make sure each chapter clocks in at over 4,000 words, at least, before I post them, and I'm sort of hesitant to make them much longer than that. It's all well and good to get long, meaty chapters, but the longer they get, the more I feel like people are going to lose interest - this is probably because I've spent a lot of time in the online roleplaying community, where any post over 1,000 words seems to garner negative attention for being unnecessarily lengthy.  
><strong>

**On another note: If anyone would like to do a little doodle or two for this, I'd really appreciate it. Drawing isn't exactly my specialty, and I'd like to be able to have photo references for Sallie, at least.  
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* * *

><p>Charon doesn't get why the fuck they're going so far out of their way now that Sallie's finally found James, but then again, <em>he<em>'s never had to look for his father. That was a perk of having dead parents and being fucking brainwashed; If you have family, you don't care. You don't care about anything, really - not your own life, not even the life of your 'employer', nine times out of ten. You just care about the contract. This has been his life for two hundred years, and things are just now changing for him. There's still a large part of him that's confused about _feeling_; He can't tell if he actually cares for the well-being of his employer, or if the fact that she seems to genuinely care about him and Gob and every other sentient ghoul they've met so far is just colouring his judgment. It must be the latter, because the idea of really caring about someone after two hundred years of fucking mindlessly obeying the same shitbag ghoul is just mind boggling and he doesn't want to deal with that yet, not when he's still adjusting to the freedoms he's been given and the fact that he now has an employer who doesn't give a shit if he sleeps or eats or voices his opinion (which he rarely does, he's still testing the water on that one, even after half a year).

It's strange, to say the least, traversing the wasteland and not having to worry about being attacked by mutated animals; The way groups of them will part like the Red Sea did before Moses in old biblical stories when the vault girl approaches them is strange. He's still expecting them to start fucking attacking the moment there's a few feet between them, but he's fairly certain in his knowledge that it won't happen. Sallie's tried to explain it before, the fact that, for some reason, the animals are drawn to her, listen to her unspoken commands, come to her aid in battle. She's tried it with scientific wording, with simple facts and statements, but it just doesn't click in his goddamn head. It's not surprising - he doesn't get much aside from weapons and armor and combat since the brainwashing. He's working on that, at least, studying the way Sallie interacts with people and the way people interact with her, trying to gain insight into how the mind of a normal person works. So far, he's not making as much progress as he would like, but he has all the damn time in the world to people-watch.

He also doesn't get why they've stopped in Arefu on their way to the destination that the distress signal is coming from. The people there are pleasant enough to her, keep mentioning that she's helped them out, but when they look at him, it's obvious that they would like to push him off this section of bridge than actually let him stay there. _Ferals really do give us a bad name_. It's damn near two in the morning when he hears footsteps outside of the shack they're staying in - one where a boy by the name of Ian West also resides. He sees the kid practically fly towards the door, and push it open and what he's not expecting is a whole group of people outside. There's a few minutes of quiet chatter before there's any mention of him or Sallie, but he finds himself sitting rigidly at the mention of his smoothskin employer's name. He doesn't know the people here at all, trusts them even less, so when six people file into the shack, grinning, he doesn't know if the people who live here will even notice.

"Ian has informed us that you are the… Employee of Miss Harper." The one who's speaking seems to be in charge. He doesn't like him - there's something about the way he speaks that makes it obvious that he thinks he's more intelligent than everyone around him, _especially _some lowly _ghoul _mercenary. If it weren't for the fact that they'd be kicked out of Arefu before he had a chance to blink, he already would have crushed the newcomer's head beneath his boot.

"For good or ill, I follow her, yes." It's the same bland old spiel he gives everyone who asks, the same one implanted in his head. It is, essentially, a segment of an official speech that he gives to each employer. Maybe it's different this time; He doesn't really know. He's learned that he can't ever say something will never happen, because that's when the tables turn and it _does _happen. It's what got him out of Underworld, it's why he actually has caps. Hell, it's why he has someone around who, for whatever fucking reason, seems to actually enjoy his company. Of course, why there's a smoothskin around who seems to prefer the company of ghouls to the company of other smoothskins still floors him. He's only seen his employer look like she was enjoying the company of two humans in all the time he's been with her: That fucking junkie Leo Stahl and his brother Andy. Charon knows she doesn't like the whore who works at the saloon, or that freakishly cheerful woman who owns Craterside Supply, and he's certain that everyone knew that she had hated Moriarty; There's also the owner of the hotel in Rivet City, Vera Weatherly, and that bastard Bannon who seems to think he's entitled to everything.

* * *

><p>Despite the sound of familiar voices in conversation, she continues trying to sleep. All she wants is just a couple more hours, <em>just a couple<em>, and she'll be fine, well-rested. Ever since she left the vault, she hasn't been sleeping all that heavily, unless she was in Underworld. Even in Megaton, she couldn't sleep well - it was all heat and creaking, clanging metal. At least Underworld has fans, even if Winthrop has to fight to keep them working. As she peels open her eyes, vision still clouded with sleep, she squints and tries to match the voices to faces she knows. _There's Charon._ she recognizes his voice before anyone else's, smiling through her sleepy haze. _And Ian. And… _"Vance?" It's been months since she's seen Vance or any of the Family - eight months, or something like it, since it was when she managed to convince the Family to protect Arefu, rather than assault it. Her sleep-addled mind must have been playing tricks on her, poking fun at her apparent inability to form bonds with _normal _people. There's no reason for Vance to be inside the shack - there's not even a reason for him to be in Arefu. She could have sworn that Justin was the one sent to protect the settlement; Maybe, _hopefully_, Vance is just checking in. It's the only reason she can possibly think of for the cannibal and his entire band of lackeys to be there.

"Why're you here?" She doesn't care if she's being rude; She's tired and she just wants answers. Really, she's hoping it's something simple, because she doesn't think she can comprehend much else right now, and if Vance is here to convince her to do the Family a favour, she's going to seriously consider disemboweling him and taking that fancy-shmancy flaming sword thing that he took with him everywhere, even if it means she and Charon have to gun down all of fucking Arefu to get away with it. "Especially at," she pauses, yawning widely as she squints at the screen of her pip-boy, the green glow stinging her eyes, "_two _in the _fucking _morning?"

"I was simply hoping to meet the… Man," it's obvious he struggles with that word like it leaves a bad taste in his mouth, like ghouls are more morally incorrect that people who live on the flesh and blood of other _people _(because that obviously a highly rational train of thought, right? Cannibals had more in common with the ferals than they liked to admit, she thinks), "under your employ. Justin came to us and reported the presence of both you and someone thus unknown."

They're here because of _Charon_? God, were cannibals ever fucking weird. Well, maybe they're vampires, technically, but still: was everyone except Robert really necessary here? "Right, well, he's Charon, he's there, right there, he's great, and I would love to go back to sleep. So, if you would kindly shut the hell up and be on your way; It was lovely seeing you again." Really, she just doesn't have time to sit and chat with a bunch of cannibals or any-fucking-one else right now, because it's two and she wants to sleep and get shit done when she wakes up. She hasn't spent time heading in the direction of the distress signal just so she can sit and chat and completely disregard it; If she wanted to speak to Vance right now, she would have headed to the Meresti metro. Charming as he was most times, after all the bullshit she'd just been through, she was not in the mood to deal with someone who treated her like a child in spite of all she'd done. For a few seconds, there's complete silence, and she takes this as a sign that her words have convinced the group to leave or at least shut up; She takes the opportunity to roll over and bury her face in the pillow. The moment she's comfortable and it's apparently obvious that she wasn't joking in the slightest, there's the familiar shuffle of feet on the dirty floor and the sound of the door creaking open.

"Of course, Miss Harper. We were simply… Concerned for your well-being. I do hope you'll take some time out of your busy schedule in the near future and visit. Good night." The Family's footsteps are heavy as they file out of the building, and she can almost hear the hesitation before anyone speaks. "Charon, was it?" The girl fights back the urge to groan and start shouting or throwing pillows and bits of trash, burying her face deeper into the pillow. _Leave, leave, leave, just fucking leave already. Kick them out or threaten them or something, Charon, or do what they want and get it over with. _This is the first time since she left Megaton that she's slept in a real bed, not on some thin little mat on the floor and she intends on enjoying it; She knows that _real _beds, not those shitty little yellow things strewn about the wasteland, are few and far between, but she's still a little bit spoiled from nineteen years in a vault. "I would very much appreciate it if you would allow me to speak to you for a few moments. _Outside_." She hears Charon grunt his acquiescence and then it's comfortably quiet, silent aside from both her breathing and Ian's, and the creaking of the mattress beneath her as she rolls onto her back and throws an arm over her eyes.

* * *

><p>He only steps outside to speak to Vance so that Sallie can get some sleep; It's obvious she needs it. There were dark circles beneath the vault girl's eyes, giving the illusion that she'd either been punched pretty solidly, or she was in the middle of a week-long psycho binge; It'd be no good to get moving tomorrow if his employer could barely function under the guise of being well-rested. They may not have wasteland creatures to worry about, but raiders were fucking batshit and slavers weren't going to give two fucks about if she was tired, and if they managed to run into the Brotherhood… Well, he couldn't really know for sure, but since those Brotherhood fucks weren't exactly fond of ghouls, odds were that he'd end up with more than a couple of bullets in his hide before Sallie even managed to get a word in. They were supposedly a group of action, at least, that's what they would probably claim if they shot him: that they were trying to rid the wastes of ferals and had mistaken him for one, or some such bullshit. It wasn't like they were people of action when it mattered, or the Enclave wouldn't even fucking exist anymore. They only take action if they think it will benefit them, and they probably think ridding the Capital Wasteland of ghouls will benefit them. The fucking Outcasts would at least spare a passing glance to figure if he was feral or not, he knew that - they'd run into a bunch of them on the way to the RobCo Facility while working on that fucking stupid survival guide that his employer now refused to get rid of.<p>

"Now, Charon, I'm sure you understand my concern." Yes, yes, he fucking does understand the concern: a pretty little smoothskin like Sallie traveling with a massive ghoul like him, it's bound to look bad, even if they know that _he's _the employee. What he _doesn't _understand is why this _fuckhead_ who obviously thinks he's _so_ fucking eloquent is concerned. "I'm simply looking out for Sallie and making sure you have her best interests in mind. She's much like the daughter I never had, you know." _Yeah, that's all she fucking needs right now, some other fucking idiot who thinks he's got her best interests in mind. That's what her fuckin' dad thought and look where it landed her. _"She's been very helpful to the Family, and I just want to know that she is in good hands if she is with you."

Bull_shit_, that's all he fucking wants to know. What Vance wants to know is if he can trust Charon not to go feral halfway through the pair's travels and start fucking attacking Sallie. He's been alive for over two centuries and he's been a ghoul for a majority of that time; He fucking knows when someone's lying through their teeth about whether or not they give a shit about him missing fucking skin and hair and smelling to high heaven. Just because he's not much for talking doesn't mean he's stupid, even though that's apparently what everyone he comes across thinks. "For good or ill, I follow her." He's sorely tempted to just leave it at that, leave Vance here to contemplate the meaning of his words and go back inside and lock the fucking door, but when he sees the man open his mouth to speak, he changes his tactics. "That means that I'm under her employ until she fucking fires me, sells my contract, or one of us dies." He doesn't mention that, if she ever asks again, he's going to tell her that he wants her to keep that slip of paper, even if she's essentially freed him from it. "I am _honor-bound_ to serve her, and that means protect her and do as she fucking asks. So, no, you don't have to fucking worry."

Sufficiently irritated and wishing to stop the conversation from going any further, he frowns, clenches his fist and turns away from the man using a flaming sword as a goddamn torch like it's nothing out of the ordinary. All he hears from behind him now is footsteps and angry muttering, and he can't say he's surprised or upset that Vance is finally fucking leaving, just vaguely pleased with himself. At least now, he'd be able to snag a few hours of sleep before Sallie was up and ready to get moving; He may have spent two hundred years napping in spare minutes after restless nights, but that sure as hell didn't mean he hadn't been tired afterward. He'd just learned to function around that; Either way, the door was going to be locked and someone was apparently patrolling outside, so he could snag a few very welcome hours of sleep before his employer decided it was time to leave. Even if he barely fucking fit on this damn bed without laying across it diagonally; If he tried to lay on it in a more comfortable and efficient (well, efficient for springing into action if necessary, anyways) manner, from the middle of his calves down, his legs hung off the edge. That was the problem with being tall, and especially taller than a majority if people: they rarely ever fucking had beds to accommodate you, like they didn't get that people could be taller or shorter or anything like that. The only time, since the bombs dropped, that he'd even had access to a bed that was big enough to comfortably fit his height, was when he'd stayed in Sallie's home in Megaton; She'd gone to talk the screwball Moira and managed to purchase a massive, heart-shaped bed from her and get a few people to help her push it home.

* * *

><p>It's nine when her eyes finally pop open. She's momentarily confused by a room that isn't her own and a ceiling that isn't dingy blue skin smeared with puffy white-grey clouds, but she manages to reorient herself after she nearly topples right off of the top bunk. With one leg thrown haphazardly onto the mattress and an arm clutching desperately at the faded fabric, she's trying desperately to keep herself from falling to the floor and causing a ruckus before the other two have even woken up. She doesn't want to be the one to wake them, especially Charon, who deserves all the sleep he can get, when he can get it, for putting up with all her quirks on a day-to-day basis.<p>

"Smoothskin, what are you doing?" She freezes, managing a glance over her shoulder to see Charon sitting at the edge of his bed, rubbing his eyes and looking vaguely amused by her predicament. "That is a bunk bed, not a jungle gym." Her brows furrow at his comment - she's read about a lot of shit from before the war, seen a lot of pictures, and she knows that plenty of shit from way back then was still standing, but she has no clue what a goddamn jungle gym is. Maybe she's seen one before and just not known what it was called? That seemed pretty likely - there are a lot of things out here that she doesn't know the terminology for. She avoids bringing those things up in an attempt to sound like an idiot less frequently. As far as she's aware, that plan works, because nobody ever comments on how stupid she is except Doc Church, and, well… He thinks everybody's an idiot.

Trying to inch her hand closer to the opposite edge of the mattress, she frowns at the ghoul. Despite wracking her brain in an attempt to connect a picture to the words 'jungle gym', she is completely unsuccessful, left still wondering what her mercenary could possibly be talking about. "What in the flying fuck is a 'jungle gym', Charon?" Charon drops his face into his hand, shaking his head, and all she finds herself thinking is how much that would have hurt him if he still had something for a nose other than a hole in his face. It takes her an embarrassingly long few seconds to realize that the ghoul is laughing at her, his shoulders shaking as he stands. "This isn't funny, you, you… You!"

The ghoul obviously disagrees with her, as he simply raises an eyebrow and makes a vague motion to the frame of the bed that she is currently clinging to for dear life. "_Not _that. It is much like…" He's searching for a word as he strides over and lifts her just enough for her to scramble back onto the mattress. "It looks much like a large cage, but it is for children to climb on." Well, if that was true, then people before the war had fucking sick senses of humour, fashioning things that looked like cages for children to fucking play on; Part of her had to wonder if they made them just to avoid actually caging children up, a way to see the kids in makeshift pens. If so… That was sort of passive-aggressive, but at least it was better than actual child abuse. She'd never been abused, but she thinks it's pretty much the worst thing you can do: physically or mentally fucking with someone who depends so heavily on you. A child will make the conscious decision to keep the abuse hidden, in some cases to protect the person who has abused them and out of fear in others. A child has _no _chance, if they fight back, unless they get lucky and has a witness. That's the worst part.

"That's sorta sick, don't you think? Making a giant-ass cage for kids to climb all over?" The question is rhetorical, but she still half-expects an answer, just like she always does. She's hoping that, some time soon, Charon will break out of his shell, at least enough to hold a conversation and actually contributing to it, rather than just listening to her babble about God knows what. She'd told him on more than one occasion that he could do whatever he wanted, so she really didn't get why he was so hesitant to stop her from speaking - then again, she hadn't spent any portion of her life under a contract, with a less than pleasant employer. Even all that he's said today is a massive improvement, but aside from snarling war cries at raiders the rest of the distance they had to go, that was probably all he would say. It's not like she can fault him for wanting to stay quiet, she just really wishes that he'd speak a little more, even if it's just to spit insults at her. It'd be preferable to constantly hearing her own voice or one of five songs or a handful of those Daring Dashwood radio programs that Three Dog ever plays, because he's apparently incapable of some fucking variation. Unlike most of the population, she's pretty she doesn't mind the way ghouls talk; Their voices are rough and sort of scratchy, yes, but not in an entirely unpleasant way, especially not after hearing the way some humans spoke. A voice that hasn't been destroyed by radiation isn't as great when all it's used for is screaming foul, foul things.

* * *

><p>By the time they've said their goodbyes and are preparing to leave Arefu, it's almost eleven o'clock. He'd suggested leaving earlier, before the heat grew unbearable, but Sallie had wanted to say goodbye to everyone, and apparently weasel some supplies out of Evan King. So there they stand, at the entrance to the small settlement, Charon watching as his employer converses with the smoothskin who is in charge. He sees her subtly lean forward, wet her lips, whisper. Holy sweet fucking hell, she's like a demon, all sweet smiles and shy words when she was all packed and ready; The moment she needs something she's all smirks and moistened lips and promises just made to be broken. The only other time he's seen her like this was when she bought his contract off of Ahzrukhal, and out here in the wastes, it's slightly alarming to see her flaunt herself so boldly just to get what she wants. He blinks as she leans back, suspecting that maybe her ploy didn't work, but then he sees Evan press several stimpaks into the girl's hand, followed by four bottles of softly glowing water. As the girl turns on her heel and walks towards him, she flashes him a devilish smirk that's a little bit disarming when it's directed at him, and glances over shoulder. "I'll make sure to stop by soon, Evan!"<p>

He snorts when, once they're just out of range of vision, the pale-haired vault girl shudders and stops to throw everything into her pack, looking utterly disgusted. "King's a fucking creep." she states flatly as she hauls her pack back onto her shoulders. He rolls his eyes. It's not like anyone forced her to chat up the man to get a few extra stimpaks, and he points it out with a raise of an eyebrow. It earns him a scowl. "It wasn't the stimpaks I wanted, I know there's plenty. It was the water - it's irradiated. Radiation heals ghouls, right? Figure we might as well keep all our bases covered, as far as healing goes." He can tell she's not mentioning _something_, the way her eyes dart around when she mentions radiation healing ghouls, but he holds his tongue on this one. The ghoul doesn't like the idea that his employer has just shamelessly flirted with another smoothskin, especially one who was at least old enough to be her father. It just doesn't sit right with him, that awkward knot that he hasn't dealt with in so long returning to his stomach briefly.

* * *

><p>When they finally reach their destination, it's ten at night, pitch black, and all she can hear is gunfire and shouting. It unnerves her, reminds her of her escape from the vault and the three security officers whose families she tore apart by shooting them - Paul Hannon, Stevie Mack and Jack Wolfe. Wrinkling her nose, she pushes after Charon, watching as a single man takes out four well-armoured raiders with what seems like ease. As they approach, he shoots her a dirty look and saddles the ghoul in front of her with an even dirtier one.<p>

"You could have helped me, you know!"

His name is Wernher, she knows that much from the transmissions. All she learns from asking him questions is that he's from a place called The Pitt, where he'd been a slave, and that there are a fuckton of other slaves there with some seemingly incurable disease. Then he springs the reason for all this on her - he needs outside help, wants somebody else to get into the house of man in charge (someone by the name of Ashur), and steal the cure. She frowns. She's a lot of fucking things, but a thief she is not; She can't just march in and steal something from a living person, and she doesn't know if she's up for murder, even if it will help a whole lot of slaves and allow them to rally together and get themselves free. But because she's stupid and she can't bring herself to say 'no' to helping out slaves, just like she hadn't been able to stop herself from killing Moriarty to free her friend, she agrees to his harebrained plan of going west and saving a small handful of slaves just so she can take one of their outfits (_Fuck that_, she decides as she pulls the armor from three of the bodies and folds it carefully so it will fit in Charon's pack, _I'm taking two and Charon's coming with_.)

It's a bit of a problem, really, this sort of hero thing.


	9. Chapter Nine: The City is at War

**I was originally intending on this chapter being much longer, but I'd like to get it posted _today_, and I've been up since half eleven last night, and it's now around half eight PM, and I've been working on this . And I feel like the introduction of Midea is at least a good place to break this one off without it flowing _too_ awkwardly. I think I have the next chapter mostly planned out as far as what quests/side quests I'll be throwing in there and how Sallie will go through them, and if she'll actually be able to _see _Charon after throwing a royal hissy fit to bring him with. I'm _hoping_ that the fights in the Hole will be a part of the next chapter, because I'm not even sure how Sallie will deal with that yet - if she'll stick to guns, or if it will force her to deal with her rather... Poor close quarters fighting skills.**

**As per usual, reviews are very much appreciated, because they let me know if I've gone to out of character with anyone I've brought into the story, however briefly, and if Sallie is, well... Sallie, however much the wasteland changes her. I do have a couple of other characters sort of plotted out for other fics I plan on eventually starting, so I may, without meaning to, be bringing in their personality traits as I write this.**

**Also: If anyone would like to do a little doodle or two for this, I'd really appreciate it. Drawing isn't exactly my specialty, and I'd like to be able to have photo references for Sallie, at least.**

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><p>"I'll give you four hundred caps for the lot." Four hundred caps was a small price to pay for three people to walk free, and, well… She had more than enough to pay for it. If she didn't have more pressing matters at hand, she'd just kill the slavers and be done with it, leave their corpses to bloat in the sun after she'd picked them clean of any valuables. <em>And The Overseer always said I wouldn't amount to anything more than a troublemaker. Serves him right to be proven wrong, the crazy bastard. <em>Granted, she'd been told she would be a troublemaker because of her friendship with Butch rather than any of her own actions, but that was beside the point. She was still out here, making something of herself, saving people, and that was more than she could say about Alphonse Almodovar himself. That man may have meant well, in the beginning, when he'd first become Overseer, but the moment he'd lost his wife, the mood all changed. She'd been just short of two years old at the time, but her father had always said that, despite favouring isolationism, Alphonse was a good man for the job of Overseer. Guess that was yet another thing to add to what seemed like a rapidly growing list of things her father had done wrong, even if they were done with good intentions. Wasn't there some prewar song that said 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions'? They were right. Her father was headed straight there, and so was she; The curse of a twisted hero complex.

She can tell by the way the slaver is shifting under her gaze that throwing on the merc charmer outfit again, in lieu of the combat armor she'd been wearing recently, was definitely a good idea. His eyes are drifting down the curve of her throat to her ample chest and darting back up to her face, over and over again. If she didn't think he'd catch on quick (those slavers were always surprisingly smart and she's learned not to underestimate them), she'd be grinning broadly right about now, teeth white against rosy lips. It would give her all away - if people managed to find a toothbrush out here, they didn't use it often, and definitely not with toothpaste; With her teeth glinting in the sun, the same shade as her hair, she'd be dead meat, metaphorically speaking. "Eulogy wants eight hundred." Word obviously hasn't gotten around about Eulogy yet - that, or some godforsaken fuck happened by and saved his sorry ass. She's betting on the latter, and makes a mental note to make sure he's dead next time - she'll probably have to let Charon take care of it.

She lets a disappointed sigh flee her lips, patting at her hips as though searching for more caps. "How about I give you six hundred… And you cover the rest?" Normally, she's hesitant to flirt, flaunt her body more than her mind in an attempt to get what she wants, but… Well, she's been reading an awful lot of old world women's magazines lately, the pages torn and faded, and she hasn't learned anything aside from the fact that flirting works better when you need something from men. In a time like this, she can't really say she disagrees - sometimes, a few sharp words just are _not _going to do the trick, and it's definitely always good to have a back-up plan of sorts that doesn't involve violence. Instead of doing what she'd normally do and just talking them in circles to confuse them, she's started with the flirting first and the harming later - she's become a bit of a black widow, really; Someone willing to pop that next button open and show off a bit of extra cleavage if it would get her what she wanted. It was a bit odd for her - she'd never wanted to be one of those women to show anything off. Flirting wasn't something she minded, but for her to go that extra mile was a rather large step in and of itself; The wasteland had been changing her this whole time and she was finally realizing it.

"I… Fine. Just give me the caps and take 'em." A knowing smirk curved over her lips and she nodded, counting out the correct amount of caps slowly. She took her time, not wanting to end up handing too many or too few (they'd count them eventually, and they'd come right the fuck after her if she cheated them even a little), but she really didn't like the way these slavers were eying Charon; Like he was nothing more than goods to be moved. Well, she'd be damned if she let them weasel his contract out of her (she didn't even have it on her, anyways, just a sheet of paper in her pocket to masquerade as a copy - she hadn't even put in the time or effort to copy the words, just torn a page out of an old book) or even try. Handing over the appropriate amount of caps, she waited for the slavers to disperse before she moved to open the slave pen, eying the people inside. Well, no way was Charon going to fit in any of those - she'd have to fashion some slave clothes or… Surreptitiously, she eyed Charon. Yes, that would work. After convincing one of the slaves to part with his slave wear and patching it up a bit, she grinned. The tables were about to turn, and she wasn't sure how long this was going to last - she may as well make the best of it, or she'd be… More miserable than she was likely to be otherwise.

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><p>To say he tenses up when she kicks the body from the mattress, motions him over and tells him to take a seat is an understatement. All he knows is that he's uncomfortable as the girl slips behind him and runs her hands over the broad span of his shoulders like she's trying to measure them for some reason she has yet to explain to him. Her hands aren't touching skin, just the leather and metal of his recently repaired armor, pressing lightly at his shoulder blades. At this point, he's not yearning for her touch like any other ghoul probably would be, longing for the feel of supple, undamaged skin; He's anxious, expecting her to do… <em>Something<em>, though he isn't entirely sure what. Thus far, the vault girl hasn't been handsy with him, hasn't grabbed at his hands to pull him along. There have been no slip-ups, he is as comfortable around her as he has ever been around anyone - but that's not saying much. He hasn't been fully comfortable around another person since before all of this, and there are times when he wonders just how much he'd actually fit into society if it weren't for the training and the ghoulification. Probably not well - even as a child, he'd been vaguely awkward and abrasive, without meaning to be. Now that he thinks about it, he probably still would have been ostracized - his childhood hadn't been happy or fearless like most, and it only got worse with the training.

"Alright, grumpy guts, up you go!" When he turned to face her once more, she was pulling raider armor from his pack and spreading it over the mattress. "There's no way you're fitting in a slave outfit - those things are barely going to keep the essentials covered on _me_." If he was capable of paling, right about now is when he probably would have. He knows her words are true - the slave outfits are obviously for people who've spent all their lives in the wastes, malnourished and lacking any real muscle. Neither of them fit the bill, really: she's of average height, sure, but her hips are wider and more rounded than one might expect of someone who is fairly graceful, and she's larger through the chest than most women he's seen, but he supposes the curves to be expected of someone from the vault, not that he really knows; He's taller than most by at least four inches and nearly solid muscle. "So, we're gonna have to, uh… Switch roles for a bit. You'll probably have to take both packs, too, or they'll probably take all of the stuff from mine and we'll never get it back…"

She's babbling again and though it's with purpose, her sentences keep trailing off like she's thought of something better. He hopes she has - the idea of being in command, while somewhat alluring, is also terrifying. "We'll have to put a mask on you, maybe one of those helmets we found on the way to vault one twelve? Because Wernher said that the raiders in the Pitt are worse about ghouls than normal people are," As she talks, he's watching her piece two separate sets of armor together so they'll fit across his back and shoulders, careful stitches with a needle and thread he didn't know she had. When she's finished, the armor looks patched and worn and exactly like it should, and he knows that, so long as he wears a mask, this part of the plan, at least, will work. They'll probably be there a week, at least, and wearing a mask that long will be irritating, but he can deal - not that he'll really have a choice. This whole situation will be one of do or die, and he doesn't intend on getting himself or his employer killed. "We'll… We'll figure out the rest as we go, I guess. Change real quick like."

Then, there's armor being shoved into his arms and he's simply staring at it for a few moments before he finally turns to change. Privacy isn't something you get a lot of when traveling, so it's the least he can do to turn his back to his employer as they both change. For him, it's the creak of shifting leather and the clinking of belts and clasps being undone, the air cool against his broken skin - running hot was a perk of being a ghoul (probably had something to do with the body constantly trying to heal itself), and most days, it made him feel like the weather outside was at least a degree or two cooler than it actually was - before he's back in armor. Behind him, he can tell that for his employer, it's just the unzipping of boots and tops and then the quiet rustle of fabric over skin as she changes. "I do not like this plan, smoothskin." he finally admits as he is given the okay to face his employer. "It is dangerous." After so much time with her, and seeing her now with scars usually hidden beneath clothing, he knows she is no stranger to danger. The are scars from bullet wounds dotting the white flesh of her right hip and thigh, barely visible because she is so pale, but those aren't the ones he takes notice of; The two he is curious about are obviously wounds from a blade, probably combat knives, but possibly a Chinese officer's sword much like the one the girl herself carries. One cuts from her right collar bone, down and to the left, ending somewhere near her sixth rib; The other, a curved line of pale pink starting around the ninth rib, on her back, and moving to directly above her belly button.

* * *

><p>"There's no way he can come with. What they'll do to him if they find out he's a," Wernher chokes on the word for a moment before he manages to spit it out, "ghoul won't be pretty." All Sallie does is look at him with a raised eyebrow, like she honestly doesn't understand the reason for him freaking out (which she doesn't, really - she has faith in Charon's ability to act in the manner that's needed, no problem).<p>

Arms crossing over her chest, all she manages to do is tap her toes for a few moments rather than calm herself down. She gets that this man has gone through shit that people shouldn't have to go through, but that doesn't give him license to act like a privileged fuckwit. "Fuck you very much, but if you want my help, he comes with - or you can mosey your ass right the fuck back on into the Pitt and get your cure yourself." Hero or no, there's not a snowball's chance in hell (whatever that meant) of her going to an unfamiliar place full of raiders _and _slavers alone. Even if she can't actually have him at her side, technically, it'll be sort of comforting knowing that Charon is _there_. His loyalty may be to his contract, but she'd like to think that, by this point, maybe he's developed enough of a fondness for her that he's not just protecting her because he has to. _Probably not. _"You asked for help, and nobody else showed up **because nobody else in the wasteland gives a rat's ass what happens, **even the Railroad. Beggars can't afford to be choosers, asshole. It's both of us, or neither of us." She feels somewhat guilty after snapping at the man and watching him virtually deflate, but, well… If she's the only person who has even bothered to venture out this way and shell out caps just so she can help, she's obviously the only one who's going to - she hates to be so pessimistic, but after nuclear warfare, pessimism is probably more like realism.

"Fine, whatever. Just get on the cart." After a few moments of hesitation, she sighs heavily and does as she's told. She already knows she's not going to enjoy this experience, no matter how much it may improve the state of the world, or this part of it, at least. It's going to be awful and violent and she'll probably have to kill more than her fair share of people, but she knows, _hopes_, that those people will have it coming, every single one of them. The death of more innocents is something she doesn't know if she can take part in, but if she must, she must. It will be a necessary evil, the death of a handful for the better of an even larger group (of course, people will be dying for attacking _her_, but she doesn't dwell much on that fact, just continues to justify it with the same old line about the greater good). All she wants to do is help, really, and she doesn't yet know if any killing that goes on will be murder or euthanasia or some sick thing in between. She's nervous as she takes a seat, carefully shifting until she's sitting cross-legged and watching Charon and Wernher get the cart moving, slowly but surely. The moment the cart starts picking up speed, they've been going about ten minutes, most of them in a darkened tunnel. As she flips on the light on her pip-boy, she squints.

Near as she can tell from the map currently open on her pip-boy screen, it's going to be a good four hours before they reach the Pitt, and something tells her the whole damn ride there is in the dark. "'_Let us descend now into the blind world_'." she quips as cheerfully as she can manage, the words out of her mouth before she's even fully aware of the fact that she's speaking. Realizing that it's not likely that Wernher or Charon will understand her reference, her cheeks heat, and she stares ahead. "It's, uh, a line, from-"

"Dante's Inferno. I read it, once. Many years ago." Screwing up her face, she grins at Charon. Even in the vault, her father had been the only other person who'd ever read the epic (okay, so maybe he'd suggested it to her and given her a copy), and it absolutely thrilled her to know someone else who'd read it. What ruined it for her was that she had only just thought about how little she actually knew about her companion and his past, and how much he knew about her. She'd spoken about her father before they'd finally found him, and the fact that he'd left her in the vault, but she wasn't sure if she ever went much further than that in her rants; It was more his fault than hers that she knew so little about him. On the rare occasion that she asked, he usually answered with an off-handed 'I do not wish to speak of it', or ignored her request to get to know him completely. She's not sure she blames him, as much she half-wants to. She decides that she's going to ask him about his past when they get back from the Pitt - even just knowing vague details would be nice. It's not like she plans on asking him to pinpoint exact emotions and exact scenarios that made him the way he is now (honestly, she's not even entirely sure that Charon really knows what emotions are and what the proper way to express them is).

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><p>The cart has barely come to a stop when Wernher hops off of it, telling them to let him do all the talking. Charon just wants to punch him so hard that he spends the rest of his life seeing things that aren't really there - but he's necessary to get them to the gates, at least.<p>

"Charon," the smoky voice of his employer sounds from his side and he stops scanning his surroundings just long enough to look at her and nod, "I don't- I don't like it, but I have to give you orders." All he can do is nod and wait; It's not like he's never been given fucking orders before. The only difference is now, he's getting orders from someone who hates it; Someone who hasn't even given him _real_ orders in the six or eight or however many months they've been together. Saying 'Do whatever you want' hardly constitutes orders. "You have to… God, just do whatever you have to for them to believe you're one of them until we can get out of here, alright? If that means hurting me, **do it**, okay? If we wanna sell this, you'll probably have to shove me up to the entrance anyways, sell something about catching an escaped slave or something, I don't know, really…"

He doesn't want to. For once, he wants to just say 'fuck the contract, and fuck your orders', but he can't. If he does, it will probably get them killed and then where the fuck would they be? Not even six feet under - who the fuck even knows what they'd do to Sallie's body, and it's safe to guess they'll burn his or something to that effect, maybe even just leave it deteriorate further. "As you wish." The girl's hands clench into tight fists, knuckles going white; He can tell without looking at her hands, the tension in her arms is a dead giveaway. He's gotten to the point where reading her is something he can do exceptionally well - a twitch at the corner of the mouth, a minute raising of the eyebrows, the tension when she's frustrated with someone who is completely oblivious, the darkness in her eyes before she does something she hates but thinks she can't avoid. There's not a single person he's met who he can read half as well as her; He hasn't had time to study them, learn their ways the way he has with her. As a rule, he hasn't liked people, human or ghoul - they've always stared, judged, _hated_, all without knowing. Sallie is different, treats him as equally as he really allows, the way he's still quiet most times; He knows he doesn't hate her like he hates most people, smoothskins especially, but he's not entirely sure if he actually _likes _her or if he's just developed a sort of begrudging indifference towards her. There are times when he feels like he would consider her a friend, if he remembered what it felt like to have a friend… Others, he's annoyed with her.

Without a second thought, he's pushing her backwards at the sound of gunfire, tugging an arc-light helmet down over his face. The flimsy, torn fabric of the slave outfit she's wearing is hardly enough to leave anything to the imagination, let alone offer any actual protection. It's later that the second thoughts rear their ugly heads, when he's in the midst of shooting one of the Pitt raiders in the face; He'd touched skin, soft, smooth, pale skin. And he knows he shouldn't have expected it, but no matter what, he's probably always going to be prepared for a smoothskin to try and harm him when he touches them. Despite all her smiles and hugs in Underworld, all her kinds word about everyone there, and about Gob and himself, he can't help thinking that, underneath it all, she's just like the rest of these wasteland assholes: A bigot. He knows he shouldn't be, but he's just waiting for that one day when she finally gets tired of her ruse, of playing saviour of the wastes and a switch flips in her, taking her from this vaultie with either a hero complex or a death wish and turning her into something dark and twisted. Nobody could make it out here without just that happening, because it's not a question of morals; It's a question of what it takes to survive and if you can fucking handle it. If he's completely honest, with himself, at least, he doesn't think she'll last much longer before she goes bad, but there's a small part of him that he currently refuses to acknowledge that hopes he's wrong, so wrong.

The last raider in the area finally cleared, he motions for her to move into the light (he uses the word 'light' loosely) and follow him and Wernher towards the gate. Without all her weaponry and armour, she looks timid, awkward, uncomfortable. Her usual confidence is all but nonexistent, her hands hang limply at her sides, and her expression is that of someone who is completely and totally miserable. He's not sure what to do in a situation like this, really - when he'd comforted her in vault one hundred twelve, it had been a fluke, something said in order to comfort himself more than her, really. He honestly doesn't have the foggiest idea of what is to be done - he figures it's different to comfort a fully grown person than a child, and he only has the vaguest memories of his parents comforting him.

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><p>"This is as far as I can go." Oddly, Sallie finds herself relieved. Something about Wernher is off and she doesn't quite trust him, but for a reason she can't quite put her finger on. It's a nagging feeling, really, something pressing at the back of her mind and no matter how hard she reaches, she can't grasp it. She shrugs it off, blames it on the radiation practically seeping out of this place. "And I hope, for your sake, they don't figure him out."<p>

Scowling, she trudges past him, Charon trailing after. "Remember, Charon: Do what you have to. Don't listen to orders I give you until after I've dealt with the cure." She doesn't know why she repeats this - probably to remind herself that she's said it, so when she's struggling to free herself and her arm is twisted behind her back and she's gasping in pain, she doesn't give him any real orders. Her fair share of shouting will be done, but that's probably expected - shouting or the silence that indicates a slave has given up and will probably die before the week is through. "Yes, smoothskin."

That same shaking from when she killed Moriarty is back. Her hands aren't as steady as she would like; She's sure that if she were to pick up a gun at that moment, she would do nothing but outline a human being in lead. "Right, let's go then." A set jaw and racing heart were really the only things that were going to belie her fears, she hoped, because she really couldn't afford to be figured out so early on. Squeaking in protest when Charon caught her arms behind her and pushed her forward as they reached the gate, she was positive there was a frown on her lips. _Right, might as well sell this then._ "No, let me go!" She wriggled, trying to free her arms from the massive ghoul's grip in what she hoped was a convincing fashion. "Let me go!"

"Caught one escaping." her companion says to the raider clad in metal armour, jerking on her arms as she nearly breaks free from his half-hearted grip. The way he's speaking has her wondering how many slavers he's actually sat down for a fucking conversation with for any length of time, for any reason. It leaves her with a bad taste in her mouth. "Panicked at the sight of all the fuckin' mines, the idiot."

"Hey, fuck yo-"

"You're lucky I don't let him paste you right there. Drag the little bitch downtown." With a sharp squeal of forced terror, she allowed herself to be dragged off, kicking and screaming all the while. Never would she let it be said that she wasn't a good actress, even if it meant enduring a bit of pain. A bit of pain that came roughly ten minutes later when Charon dumped her rather unceremoniously onto the ground. Even though she can't see his face, she glares up at him, lip curling into a sneer when he simply turns and walks away; She can't hide the fact that she's relieved that, for a little while, she doesn't have to keep up with _that _particular charade. She's going to be tired and a damn nervous wreck by the time she gets out of here. When she finally pushes herself from the dirty ground and scans the area, she catches sight of a woman pacing, and she can only guess at who she is and hope desperately that she's correct as she approaches.

"You must be Midea."


	10. Chapter Ten: It's in the Water

**Alright, this chapter is short for one reason, and one reason only: my mother is going into surgery in two days, and I wanted to get a chapter out as soon as possible, because I don't know when the next will come. I have to do a lot of chores and prep work around the house for the next two days, so that things are as easy as possible for her when she comes home. Hopefully, I'll get another chapter up… Soon.**

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><p>She's fairly certain Midea is supposed to be considered kind; All she really seems to be is fucking annoying and self-righteous. No matter how frequently Sallie asks, the slave matriarch isn't forthcoming with information - just vague and unhelpful and there are several times where the former vault dweller seriously considers bashing the woman's skull in with the chair in her room. It's not like she's asking for much, really. Just information on the Pitt, the background of the area, trying to find out where she can get the things she needs while she's here, the essentials. All she ever gets out of Midea is the repeated mention of the cure and Trogs, whatever the hell a Trog is (she's a little to scared to ask), aside from obviously unique to this place, since she's never heard of them before. As long as it's nothing like a Yao Guai, she doesn't care - those things give her the heeby-jeebies. All they did was remind her of the teddy bear she'd had when she was seven, the teddy bear that was probably torn to shreds and stained, the eyes probably melted bits of plastic at the bottom of the trash incinerator, odd as that sounds. That teddy bear and an image of what she imagined was supposed to be a living, yellow stuffed bear on the cover of a book of stories from something like a century and a half before the war: those were all she had ever seen of bears before she came out here.<p>

"You're going to have to go to the steelyard while I get some things straightened out," Midea told her the next day, and she eyed the woman suspiciously. It was probably just her dislike of the woman making everything she did or said sound like she was trying to hide something, she concluded after a few moments. Aside from the fact that she was one of the single least helpful people that Sallie had ever had the pleasure of meeting (and that was considering that she'd grown up with Butch), she couldn't be all that bad. At least slavery hadn't reduced the woman to a pathetic, blubbering mess who could hardly form sentences because she was so damn afraid of who knows what. "They'll have you collecting ingots. You'll want to watch out for Trogs, and see Marco in the mill if you need a weapon."

Great, menial labor. _My favourite_. "Wait, what? Trogs? Again with these fucking 'Trog' things? What in the everloving, irradiated _fuck _is a 'Trog'? _Why_ do I need a weapon?" If she didn't get an answer this time, she was just going to tell Midea and Wernher they could shove the cure up their asses, because no way was she going through the steelyard unprepared. She needed at least a vague idea of what she was going to be up against between scouting the area for ingots, especially if it posed enough of a threat that people were fucking scared.

Midea sighed. She had been hoping to skirt the issue, for the most part. "They used to be like us. But between the radiation and the pollutants here… They changed. They used to be like us; Everyone fears becoming one of them. They're monsters. You'll understand when you see them. Just make sure to stop and speak to Marco before you go out there."

Biting the inside of her cheek to keep from snapping at this woman - she really didn't recall ever having _this _much trouble just holding her tongue when someone was being stupid - she managed a nod. "Thank you. I'll be back here once I'm finished." _Good lord, that was like fucking pulling teeth._

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><p>Charon still didn't like this. He knew it was orders and he knew that if the raiders hadn't managed to figure out that he was a ghoul over night (not that most of them had a right to judge, since they'd been here long enough for the 'trog' to set in - some of them looked to be in worse condition than he, specifically a raider by the name of Mona), they probably weren't going to… But this place was fucked up. He couldn't enjoy the pleasant buzz of the radiation because of all the pollution, couldn't mention any of his past experiences (not that he was likely to, but his point was that he couldn't), nothing. And so he stayed mostly silent, aside from a few snarky remarks referring to someone's genitalia or lack of skill with a weapon - the one upside to these people seeming to be that, if they thought you were one of them and not a walking corpse, you could get away with pretty much any crimes against them. That included pushing one of them, a bitch called Vikia, out of a window fairly high up - that had earned cheers. He hadn't expected that; Then again, he hadn't expected to push Vikia out of the remnants of a fifth floor window, either. It had just been sort of a spontaneous thing and he'd had it up to <em>here <em>with her bitching about every-fucking-one and their mother was beneath her.

"Hey, you! Yeah, you, you giant-ass motherfucker! It's your fuckin' turn to patrol in the Mill. Get your lazy ass down there, tell Bone she's allowed out!" With a roll of his chalky eyes behind his mask, he nodded, grunted in reply, and stood. Hopefully there'd be a chance to speak to Sallie while he was in there - he wanted to know how much longer she needed, because he wanted to get the hell out of this shithole. This place was like they'd turned up the metaphorically volume on every single problem in the goddamn wasteland and concentrated it into one place; He could practically hear the genes of passing raiders _sobbing_. That shit wasn't normal. No fucking wonder half this place was crawling with those trog fuckers - between the pollution and the Monongahela, Ohio and Allegheny rivers being fucking _clogged _with radiations, this place was a veritable hotbed of 'fuck your genes up', and man, he was lucky his were already about as ruined as possible without him going fucking feral. Fuck, if _this _shit caused him to go feral after years eating irradiated food, drinking irradiated whiskey, he was going to be pissed.

"You. You Bone?" A nod, and half a snarky comment through her lips before Charon interrupted. "Get the fuck out, your patrol is over." He's lucky the mask distorts his voice, or his ravaged vocal cords might be more apparent - as it were, he just sounded vaguely… Sick. "No, out. Orders from higher up. Haul your ass outta here for the day." He waits until she's a safe distance away before taking her spot, leaning against the wall and watching the slaves work. Unlike the raiders, he has no intention of punishing them for slacking - he's been on the short end of that stick too many times to fucking count and he doesn't feel completely comfortable putting someone else through it, act or not. He's just going to stand here and look intimidating, and he's damn good at that, without the weapons or the threats; Someone who stands at over six feet tall is bound to be a little bit scary, and he's had years of practice.

* * *

><p>She's been looking for Marco for what feels like hours - in reality, it's been a little bit over twenty minutes. One whole section of the Mill has been searched so far, and nothing except the entrance to the Hole found (along with an ammo press that she was absolutely dying to figure out how to use). As she passes a group of slaves, doing something that looks vaguely like shoveling coal, a familiar voice calls out to her, tells her to stop. Brows furrowed, she looks around for all of two seconds before her eyes land on the source - and it's not hard for her to figure out who it is. Squashing the veritable squeal of absolute elation she feels at the sight of him (<em>When had <em>_**that**__ started happening? Must be this place._), she takes a deep breath and does her best to sound nervous as she discreetly motions for him to follow. God, is she ever glad that Charon's so much larger than, well, everyone. It may make him stick out like a sore thumb, but at least you could tell he was there, take some comfort in the fact that you were something resembling safe. "Yes?"

"I need to talk to you," he grinds out, before grabbing her roughly by the elbow and dragging her off, "_now_."

For a split second, she has the decency to look terrified, but then she catches sight of a man with an auto axe, glancing around shiftily. "Charon, Charon!" she hisses, "Go in there! I need to talk to that guy!" All she can do is hope nobody hears as she's dragged into the room and Charon releases her arm, but doesn't relax the tension in his legs, proof positive that he's ready for anything. "Are you Marco?" She hardly waits for a nod before launching into some long winded explanation of why she's there and why she needs the weapon. Marco looks a strange mix between scared and incredibly angry that she's discussing this so cavalierly in front of one of the Pitt raiders.

"Are you insane? He can hear you, shut up! This could get me killed!"

Waving one hand dismissively, she grins broadly. If there's one thing Marco doesn't currently have to worry about, it's being killed by the raider nearest him. "Oh, him? He's harmless," she chimes, turning briefly to wink at Charon, "like a teddy bear." At the disbelieving look she receives as Marco hands over an auto axe, she lets out a snort of laughter. "No, really - this one's on our side. May not act it, but he is."

The ghoul lifts his mask long enough to make it very clear that he is glaring at her, and the look of disgust that crosses Marco's face can't even be hidden. He stays quiet, grimacing to himself - the moment he says something, he's probably going to lose them all a powerful ally in this, and that is far from what they need. It's hard enough without help, and shit, if it takes a ghoul to help him out of this godforsaken hellhole, then he can deal with that - he has to.

* * *

><p>"Smoothskin. What is the plan? How long will we be here?" They're in the back of Marco's workshop now, trying to stay quiet as they discuss this. "How long do we need?"<p>

Sallie swears loudly, and it's all he can do not to laugh at her. All her fussing about staying quiet, and she's the one who ruins that by shouting 'fuck'. "I don't know. I have to go through the steelyard, and then report back to Midea…" The girl rubs at her face, taking in a few lungfuls of the near toxic air. "It'll be awhile. I haven't even been able to find out what the cure _is_, let alone how to _get _it." She had to figure out a way to get into Lord Ashur's mansion, and something was telling her it was going to take a whole lot effort on her part, which she was definitely not looking forward to in the least. "I'll… Try and keep you updated, if I can. If you can just manage to pop in here every so often, we'll be good." She hoped. This was all assuming that neither of them managed to keel over before they found the cure, be it from the pollutants or the raiders, or even the radiation (which probably would not kill _him,_ unless it made him go feral and got him shot, but would definitely kill her at some point - just because it helped her heal did not mean she ever actually flushed it out of her system without the help of some Rad-Away).

"I can do that, smoothskin." he assures her, almost rolling his eyes. It probably wouldn't be difficult - he'd just have to mention giving the slaves hell and he'd have free fucking reign to do whatever the hell he pleased. That part of this was nice - it was easy enough to lie about his actions, and anyone with half a fucking brain wouldn't sell him out if they enjoyed living. "I will meet you at the same place each day." It may not have been an actually order, but he latched onto it like it was one all the same - he fucking needed that, here, something like his usual life, a small semblance of something resembling normalcy. His employer reaches forward, takes his hand, and gives it a squeeze before muttering a soft 'thank you' and they part ways. He ends up staring at his hand like he's fucking stunted, because he still can't believe she's willing to touch him, gloves covering his hands or not. Even people who claim not to be bigots hate touching ghouls; The way the smell clings to their flesh and never seems to leave.


	11. Chapter Eleven: Counting Bodies

**Right, well, here's another chapter, folks. I'm not entirely sure where to go in the next chapter - as I've said before, I do have a list of quests that I would like to cover in this story, but I'm just not sure which ones I'd like to do. Suggestions are appreciated, so go ahead and leave those, pretty please.**

**As per usual, reviews would be lovely, as would someone making some reference art for either this story or _Nothing Places, Cellophane Sounds_.**

**_EDIT: _My mother is currently on bed rest, so this will probably be the last chapter for a while.  
><strong>

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><p>"Oh, sweet <em>goddamn<em> Mary, mother of _Jesus fucking Christ_! What in the holy flying _fuck _is that?" Oh, God, oh, God. If that was a fucking Trog, no wonder people were terrified of them - they looked like the very definitely of devolution. Their skin was wrinkled and an angry, angry red; They didn't seem to be capable of bipedal motion, but they were more than capable of tearing the fuck out of whatever body part they could reach - she was learning that the hard way. "Ow! You nasty little fuck!" Her patience had rapidly deteriorated in the face of three Trogs, and she loosed a growl of frustration as she kicked one of them square in the chest and pulled the auto axe from where it had been slung across her back. These things may have been nothing short of absolutely fucking _terrifying_, but dwelling on that would do nothing but get her killed. After managing to decapitate the one in the center, she ended up spinning in place, swinging wildly until the last of the snarls died away. She dropped to her knees, wincing. There was a rather large gash on her left thigh, and she had no stimpaks, no way to heal the gash… But there was a body just a foot or so from her that looked promising. Crawling forward, she sifted through the belongings of the dead slave - there was an assault rifle, ammo for it, and two stimpaks, all of which she gladly took without feeling guilty.

Jamming the stimpak into her leg, she sighed, watching the skin of her thigh knit back together into an ugly, puckered scar as she injected herself. The other stimpak, she would save for later, because there was no doubt in her mind that she would need it. She supposed she had to count herself lucky - she had survived with only a massive gash on her thigh, where the other slave clearly had not. At least she had a gun, now; She'd be able to take the Trogs out from larger distances, something she was more grateful for than she expected. Fewer injuries, fewer stimpaks needed - and less of Charon's fussing later on. The last thing she needed when this whole thing was finished was to listen to him harp on her about hurting herself for a bunch of people she'd never met, which is exactly what he did every single time she decided to undertake some harebrained mission… That was usually for Moira. In fact, now that she thought about it, most of that survival guide had been finished with Charon's help. Same with finding Bryan Wilks a place to stay - because she would definitely have avoided the fire-breathing ants for much, much longer without him. There's a lot she probably wouldn't do without him, but she won't say that out loud, because it sounds cheesy and stupid and a hundred other negative things. Pathetic, for instance.

With a frown, she stares at the steel ingots beside the corpse she's still seated near. Those things look _heavy_ - there's no way she'll be able to carry them around the yard, even in her makeshift pack, and she's sure that if she leaves them at the door, someone will take them, but it's looking like that's her only option. Hesitantly, she leans forward to lift one from the ground and nearly falls backward because of how much she'd been prepared to lift. This can't possibly weigh more than a pound, and it's actually much smaller than it had looked, now that she holds it in her hands. She's only been told to collect ten - that will be easy, assuming she can find them damn things.

"B-b-billy? Billy, it's me!" _Oh, why does that not sound good? _Roughly shoving the two ingots into her pack, she pushes herself to her feet, assault rifle in hand, and follows the sound of the voice. "Billy?" If she didn't have her hands full already, trying to keep a steady grip on the assault rifle as she emptied a few rounds into the head of a Trog cornering a slave, she probably would have… Well, she didn't know what. "That was Billy, I know it was him. It was him!" She watched with wide eyes as the slave collapsed, apparently dead. Instead of going about her business, she scrambled to pick the lock on the fence, checking for a pulse. When she did not find one, she sighed heavily and proceeded to pick through his belongings. A couple more stimpaks, and a syringe of med-x. That was good, helpful. Now she just needed to find more ingots (and maybe some more stimpaks, just to have) so she could get the hell out of this godforsaken place. This was fucking stressful and she just wanted to go home and curl up in her bed and _sob_, but not before she scrubbed herself as clean as she could manage. Holy sweet hell, this place was _awful_.

She spends the next hour and a half scouring the damn steelyard, screeching every time she runs into a group of Trogs before she kills them. Maybe she should feel guilty for killing them when they were slaves once, but she doesn't; As far as she's concerned, they're exactly like the ferals that lurk in the metro tunnels (granted, she would much rather let Charon deal with those - she generally did, they made her nervous). When she finally stumbles back into the steel mill, breathing heavily and bleeding from a handful of wounds that she decided she would deal with once she was _safe_, the raider in charge takes one look at her, and snorts.

"Well, look who made it back alive." he states with a dry chuckle and a roll of his eyes. "How many ingots'd you bring me?"

Only just resisting the urge to spit in his face, she manages to drop all fifteen ingots she had found onto the desk in the room with a triumphant smile. "Fifteen."

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><p>When he sees her again, she is filthy, covered in dirt and grime and god knows what else, and wearing pieced together armor that she probably picked off of a corpse. She looks drained, tired, upset - and he can see fresh scars on her legs and arms where she'd been cut or scratched or something and used a stimpak to knit the flesh back together - but pleased to have a real weapon (a combat shotgun, much like his own, from the looks of it) in her grip. And she looks determined, her jaw set, eyes hard behind the lenses of her glasses, as she approaches Spook, the raider who stands at the entrance to the Hole. He isn't sure why she's going there (that's a lie he's feeding himself to try and keep calm - he's heard the announcements about some slave being selected, he just was not prepared for it to be her), but he wants to rush in and stop her, carry her away, forget about all these fucking raiders and slaves, but he can't do that. It's against the only orders he's been given, and it'll get them both killed.<p>

As she heads down the stairs, raiders begin to file in around the massive, fenced-off hole in the floor to watch the fighting. He elbows two of them out of the way, throws punches when they protest. Now is not the time for them to be complete assholes - he will not be kind, he will only cause pain. When the announcer begins speaking, he is silent, staring down. Three versus one is hardly fair, and in hand-to-hand, Sallie would have no chance - but he can see they've let her keep that shotgun, which means she won't be going down without a fight. The slaves probably couldn't beat her anyways, irradiated and malnourished, regardless of the fact that they have various weapons; She's better with a gun than she thinks she is, and people tend to underestimate her (he's guilty of that himself). When the barrels drop, he almost winces - almost. The radiation will make all four people down there sick, evening the playing field, but his employer has her gun and a strange air of confidence as the gates swing open a moment later. Unlike the slaves, who are ducking for cover and trying to angle shots from ten millimeter pistols at her, or trying to manage a hit with combat knives, she stands, eyes narrow, prepared. He isn't sure what's going on - he's never seen her like this in combat, so coldly appraising and coiled, ready to spring into action.

The moment one of the slaves darts forward, aiming, by the looks of it, to dig their combat knife between her ribs and puncture a lung, she simply levels her gun with his face and pulls the trigger, sending the body sprawling back a couple of feet. Charon is impressed - he's only ever seen her kill people who genuinely deserved it, to the extent of his knowledge. He's only ever seen her put down raiders and slavers and super mutants and those damned mutant ants, things that put them in real dangers; Everything else, she seemed more than capable of talking her way out of. As he watches, she turns, completely ignoring the spray of bullets peppering her arms and torso, and lands a well-aimed shot, dead center of the gun-toting slave's chest. This leaves a single opponent, a frail-looking slave with two combat knives - and happens to look like he may actually know how to use them, the way he's twirling them around and circling Sallie like a lion after prey. The girl doesn't seem the slightest bit fazed by this, continuing to trudge about the area and eye the slave. Knowing her, she's freaking the fuck out over this. When the slave lets out a shrill war cry and flings himself towards the girl, there's a bit of a scuffle - he manages to land a couple of good slashes on her arms and one across her cheekbone, the way he's swinging wildly, but the girl simply flips the gun in her grip and bashes him in the head with it before shooting him.

Charon is silently prideful as he watches the girl retreat for recovery before the next round; He doesn't know how the girl managed to put aside her dislike for killing the innocent, but she did it, and won. At that, he blinks - why is he proud? She is simply his employer, is she not? He'd hardly call her a friend, or anything of the sort, but then again, he doesn't really remember what it's like to _have _a friend, it's been so long. Maybe a friend is exactly what she is. Maybe that would make sense - she's done the best she can to free him without destroying his contract (he doesn't even know what would happen if she did - if he would just have some sort of meltdown or a psychotic break or what), treated him as her equal. That is more than anyone has done for him in a long time. _Yes_, he nods slightly at his thoughts, _perhaps a friend is exactly what she is. _He's a little bit uncomfortable with this revelation, but he squashes the awkward feeling by throwing his elbow back into the sternum of a raider who'd been trying to practically climb over him the entire time.

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><p>"Some people think they're halfway to Trog!"<p>

She doesn't know why Faydra is so damn cheery about that; Trogs were fucking terrifying. If people thought that the Bear Brothers were halfway there… Well, she wasn't entirely sure that she wanted to face them, armed or not. "Fuckin' gre- _Ow_! Fuck!" One thing was for sure - Faydra was _not _gentle with the needle for the radiation removal concoction. The woman had, rather unceremoniously, stabbed the needle into Sallie's shoulder and depressed the plunger in a matter of seconds, giving the white-haired girl absolutely no warning. Rotating her arm and wincing at the shift of sore flesh, she sighs. It's now or never for this next fight; If she doesn't get it done and over with, she never will. "Wish me luck, Faydra."

As she pushes open the grating, she hears the raider loose a sharp bark of a laugh and spit out some less than savory comment. When her eyes adjust to the much dark area she's now in, she frowns and fights the urge to turn and push back through. Faydra hadn't been joking - they looked mean as all hell, and on top of that, one of them had a Deathclaw gauntlet. A fucking _Deathclaw _gauntlet. Those things weren't common; It took a whole metric fuckton of effort to kill a Deathclaw, and even more to cut off it's fucking hand without fucking that up. The other had a flamethrower, which she quickly decided was significantly less terrifying, probably because if she can get in a good shot on the tank, it will either blow up or rapidly run out of fuel. It's the gauntlet she's worried about now. Swallowing hard as the announcer finishes his spiel, she pushes the gate open, shaking hands trying to steady themselves as she lifts her shotgun.

The last round hadn't been too bad, in retrospect. Three not-so-well-armed, nameless slaves - she'd been able to deal with them quickly, once she had pushed back the mild sickness that threatened to rear its ugly head at the thought of murdering people who weren't even free. This round… Well, this round, if she even thought of backing out, she'd wind up as vaultie paste on the irradiated ground. And that's if she was lucky.

_Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck! _These fuckers were fast - as least the one with the gauntlet was. The other one seemed to be hanging back, waiting for the opportunity to burn her to a crisp and leave her to turn into dust. There's a sharp sting at across her back, and she winces, spinning around and firing a couple of shots at the brother's shoulder. It's enough to slow him down, allow her to catch her breath for a moment before pumping more shots than necessary into his face. Touching her left hand lightly to her back, she grimaces - three gashes, at least, and man, for once, she is so fucking happy that Moira had had her do all those stupid things for the survival guide, because otherwise, the radiation wouldn't heal her; Because otherwise, she'd be a goner. May as well be, anyways, the way the remaining brother is glaring at her. He advances, leaving her scrabbling backward and trying to get a good grip on her gun - her hands are sweating like mad, and her left hand is slick with her own blood, making it difficult. As a burst of fire hits her shin, she lets out an animalistic hiss; Her hands still aren't dry, but she'll be fucked if she lets some asshole with a flamethrower be the one that takes her down.

Doing her best to steady herself as she leans back against the nearest wall, a sick grin twists her lips. "Hey, asshole!" She drags in a shaky breath, taking careful aim, "You know what they say: Never underestimate your opponent." When he falls to the ground, clutching his gut, Sallie drops to her good knee, spitting on the ground beside his head. "Sorry you got stuck with the short end of the stick." It's all she can really offer as consolation as she delivers the killing shot and pushes herself up. _That fucking cure better be worth it or I am going royally fuck Wernher __**up**_. Only pausing long enough to pull the Deathclaw gauntlet off the corpse of the first brother she'd dispatched, she limped out of the Hole.

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><p>That, that had been extremely… Stressful, nerve-wracking, upsetting to watch, all sorts of things that he wasn't used to feeling. More than once, he'd very nearly shoved through the crowd and ran down the stairs to pull the girl away from the fight - she was his employer and a <em>friend <em>and on top of sort wanting to, he was contractually _obligated_ to protect her. She may have given him orders, but that didn't stop the strange push-pull thing going on in his mind between the decision to listen to her and to completely disregard her orders, no matter how many times he tried to tell himself that it would be more detrimental for him to break out of the act.

Now, there's just one more of these stupid fucking matches for him to sit through, and that means they're one step closer to getting out of here. _It's only taken four fucking days, shit. _This part, at least, was pretty rapid-fire - fight, few minutes of recovery and getting the barrels of toxic shit back up, then back out. Lather, rinse, repeat (metaphorically speaking, because this situation wasn't like washing hair in the least). He's heard stories about Gruber, about the fact that he managed to earn his freedom and kept fucking coming back to fight, because he liked it. That's worrisome - but it's safe to assume that if Sallie's heard the stories, she won't hesitate to unload an unnecessary amount of rounds into the bastard's skull.

Instead of the fire fight he had half-hoped for, half-expected, there's several minutes of the two watching each other, trying to find a weak spot in their defenses. When there's finally the familiar sound of gunfire, it's not the powerful blasts he wants to hear - it's the annoying pop of a silenced assault rifle, barely audible over the raider shouting in his ear. For a few minutes, he thinks he's going to be stuck here for the rest of his life, clueless, confused without an employer, but then there's the sound of the shotgun, once, twice, three times, and as he peers into the Hole, he can see Sallie standing over a body and plucking a gun from it's grasp. As he moves to head down and speak to her, someone runs by, lugging an old footlocker (and he's willing to bet the only reason they're moving that fast with that thing in tow has something to do with psycho or something) after them. He's halfway down the stairs when the same raider rushes back by, empty-handed, and when he turns back to the stairwell, he is not expecting to see the vaultie (could he venture so far as to refer to her as 'his'? She was, to some extent, was she not?) standing before him, in her usual armor and her pack on her back.

"You did well, smoothskin." The grin she flashes him is startling - like she's simultaneously disgusted with herself and incredibly proud. This close, he can see the silvery-white checkmark on her left cheekbone; It's strange how much it looks like it should be there.

"Thanks, Charon. Now, c'mon, y'big lug!" Either she's completely given up on this farce, or she's feeling overconfident because she won. He'll put money on the latter. "I've got to pay Lord Ashur a little visit."

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><p>They were so close to getting out of this place, so, so close. Just get into Ashur's mansion, and snag the cure, and run like the hounds of hell are at their heels, that's all they have to do. And now, standing outside of the mansion in question, she can almost taste her freedom - freedom and some less irradiated water. None of the raiders give them odd looks when she finally works up the courage to push that door open and run up the stairs; She's surprised by that. No curiosity, no rage, no second glances, not even in Charon's direction. She's grateful, though - she'd probably crumble under their stares.<p>

Which is what she nearly does when speaking to Lord Ashur. "I-I-I-I…No, I… I met Wernher, I'll admit that. But he seemed like bad news - I figured I should steer clear of him." The man formerly of the Brotherhood seems to eye her for a moment, trying to gauge her reaction to his question, before nodding slightly and smiling. A man with a smile that warm can't possibly be that bad, or too withholding with information, so she scrounges up what's left of her courage and speaks. "When I spoke to Wernher… He mentioned something about a cure. Is… Can I ask about that?"

"Go through that door there and turn left."

Thoroughly puzzled, she obeys, Charon following after her. There's a woman in the room she's been instructed to enter, and a baby in a small crib of the sort that she's only ever seen in old medical books. No sign of a cure - just the woman and child, a terminal which she is itching to investigate, and a first aid kit.

"I assume Ashur let you back here?"

"Yes, ma'am. I… Asked about the cure, and he sent me through here." The woman smiles warmly at that, and Sallie is sure that if this woman were a bird, she'd currently have her feathered little chest puffed out in a show of pride. She directs the vault girl to look through the terminal (which she does, greedily devouring information about Trogs, but pausing when she begins reading the entry about the cure), before looking fondly at the baby. "The cure is… the baby?"

"As you read, Marie was born with a natural immunity to the mutations here. We're working on a cure - so we can set everyone free, let the Pitt grow naturally, as it should - but we can only go so fast. She _is _just a baby, after all."

Standing, Sallie nods. "I understand. Thank you for your time, ma'am." As she stomps out of the building, she doesn't stop to speak to Ashur again, and it's obviously best that she didn't, with all the chaos. Raiders are running around, shooting wildly at slaves who've managed to get into the house, and it's only worse outside - but she doesn't care. She dodges fights and slaves who have obviously realized that she isn't on their side until she manages to find Midea, who looks none too pleased with her.

"So, Ashur managed to convinc-"

"Shut the _fuck _up, Midea!" Her voice has climbed to a high-pitched shriek by the end of the sentence, eyes mere slits as she looks at the slave woman. God, she hopes she can't call a bluff well, because right now, bluffing is all she has. "Tell me where Wernher is. I have _no _problem breaking your fingers one by one if you don't." She's already had her family, the sad, pathetic excuse for a family, torn apart by her father leaving; No fucking way is she letting that happen to a baby, and no way is letting Midea talk her into going back and getting the baby.

"The steelyard, he's in the steelyard, Jesus Christ!"

_Oh, he is going to fucking get it._

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><p>He's decided he likes this cold, brutal side of his employer, the side that he has never seen before this trip. Never before had he seen her make threats against the innocent, shove through crowds and ignore those in need in this manner - it's intriguing. It gets better when they reach the steelyard and she doesn't seem to have calmed down yet.<p>

"Everything's all set up, just give me the br- Where's the kid?"

Behind his mask, Charon allows a smirk to flicker over his features. _Wrong time for __**that**__ question, buddy. _Sallie was wound up before, but dealing with someone who'd tried to pull the wool over her eyes? She was practically foaming at the mouth, she was so angry, and it was only amusing him.

_CRACK_!

"You _son of a bitch_!" He moves forward to catch his smoothskin about the waist - if he doesn't, Wernher has no chance of surviving, and she'll probably fuck up her hands. Even though he would love to watch her punch Wernher until she can't feel her hands, he can't do that; In this place, leaving the slaves be is simply the lesser of two evils, if only because the people in charge intend on freeing them. "You wanted me to kidnap a _baby_! A _baby_! You had no right, you fucking _bastard_! Charon, let go of me, I'll _slaughter _hi-"

"No." His employer pauses in her tirade to swivel her head around and stare at him like he's just grown a third head - because obviously, being a ghoul isn't the slightest bit strange. "No. Leave him here, smoothskin. You've already broken his nose," he cannot hide his amusement at that, "and if you keep going, you will break your hand. Just leave him here to be strung up by the raiders."

"He tried to get me to kidnap a _baby_, Charon. A _baby_." she repeats with a frown, as though that should justify her beating the everliving fuck out of the man. It sort of does, but why kill him when they can just leave him here to wallow in his complete inability to get anything finished on his own?

With a snort, he rolls his eyes. This is probably the most he's talked in all the time she's had his contract, but it's necessary. "Yes, he did. And you didn't, so calm down, and let's go." Letting the girl go as she stilled in his grip, he nodded.

"Just so you know, you worthless fuck," she pauses, long enough to spit at Wernher's feet, "they're working on a cure up there. You're not going to get it any fucking faster than a _doctor." And with that, she allows Charon to guide her out of the building._


	12. Chapter Twelve: Hero

**I'm still looking for a beta reader, guys! I know there are mistakes along the way, in both this and _Nothing Places_, but I don't usually catch them until I scan the chapters later on, and then I'm too lazy to change them. Eventually, I'll go through and make all the necessary edits, but until then, please do bear with me. I think it's mostly additions of extra letters to form other words, anyways.**

**Either way, we're getting further into things here, and the next chapter... I may try my hand at smuttiness. If there are enough reviews prompting me to do so, that is. It's not something I've ever done in my off-site writing, so it may not be, well... Good.**

**And I may wrap this up soon so I can plan some sort of sequel... I'm not sure where I'd go with that, or where I _should _go with that, so do leave suggestions~**

**Reviews would be appreciated, as would art.**

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><p><em>Ladies and gentlemen, listen up, please:<br>I don't wanna be your hero  
><em>

Three months have passed since the events in the Pitt, and she still shakes with rage when she thinks about it. The fact that she went in blindly, almost got roped into kidnapping a _child_, it hurts, makes her realize that she's still more naïve than she thinks she is or even wants to admit. What hurts more is that, for a split second, she seriously considered taking that baby and fighting her way out of the mansion; She just couldn't bring herself to drag someone away from their family like that. A broken family isn't something she'd wish on anyone - even if the baby probably wouldn't remember, in the long run - because it hurts. Turns a normal life wrong and twisted and painful, at least in her experience. A dead mother and a father who bailed to purify some goddamn water, without even saying anything? It kind of makes you think about things. She doesn't want to be bitter, but she feels she's entitled to more of an explanation than 'I wanted to do this because it was what your mother worked towards her entire life'. Sounds like a cop-out, if you ask her. There's a little voice in the back of her head always, constantly telling her that it was for the best, that her father leaving forced her to grow up and learn and change; A much louder voice tells her that she's right to be upset, that if her father was going to leave, the least he could have done was warned her instead of leaving a goddamn _holotapes _with Jonas. The latter is the one she listens to, and that's why she's stayed in Megaton for the past three months, instead of heading to Rivet City to meet up with her father and the rest of the scientists.

She'd probably be out of practice with shooting if she didn't wander outside the walls, within a mile of the city every day, picking off raiders who get to close. Jericho bitches at her every so often when she comes back, whining about how he'll have nothing to do at the rate she's going; All she does is fix him with a scathing look in reply and slip by. There are bigger problems in the wasteland than some washed up old fuddy-duddy raider who gets restless just like she did in the vault - the Enclave and working up to heading to Rivet City, for instance, and she doesn't have the patience necessary to deal with someone who is twice her age, at the very least, whining like a child anymore. Some days, she just wants to give up and march to Rivet City and tell her father she doesn't give a shit, that it isn't worth it to be chasing pipe dreams; Most, she just tells herself that she needs to help with this because it is what her mother would want, and the least she can do for the woman who gave birth to her is this one little thing. It's the only reason she hasn't considered throwing herself off of the roof of her house yet - that and she'd feel awful, leaving Charon alone (even if she technically wouldn't feel anything, being dead and all). She doesn't know if her dying will forfeit his contract to the highest authority, or if it will set him free, and she doesn't want to take chances of him being stuck in one place for too long. He'd already spent god knows how long in the Ninth Circle, and after having freedom for over a year now, it would probably suck to be right back to that.

Speaking of Charon, she finds herself thinking of him more and more frequently, as of late; It's something she isn't sure she can explain, not even to herself. Really, she's not all that surprised by the development of feelings - he's been there for her (or rather, with her) through a lot of shit, even if it was only because she was his contract holder - she's just surprised that she finds herself pining away during her spare time. If there was one thing she never thought she'd be, it was the girl from some of those shabby, pre-war romance novels, sighing and staring and hoping she'd be noticed because she couldn't quite pluck up the courage to admit anything out loud. Give her a gun and raiders to kill, she can handle it without issue; Give her feelings for someone and good luck trying to get her to admit them out loud, _especially _to someone like Charon, who, when given what is essentially freedom, took about a year to warm up and start speaking more freely. Her life has officially just become some jumbled mess of radiation and unsure feelings and nervousness and fear, and she doesn't like it one bit. There's not even someone she can confide in out here in the wastes - in the vault, she had Amata, out here… She has only Gob and Charon, and while she loves Gob to death, she figures if she said anything, he'd just gape and keep asking if she was serious. He wouldn't mean it to be offensive, but, well… She'd probably be offended. It wasn't _her _fault that she'd fallen for the gigantic ghoul in an sense of the phrase - if it were up to her, she would definitely choose someone who would likely reciprocate her feelings.

But it wasn't her choice, and now she was going to be stuck keeping her feelings hidden because she didn't want to scare Charon off. Without him around, she knows she'll die or something - she is surprised she made it four months with out him, let alone got all that she did done. After all the times she's told him he can leave if he wants to, she doesn't want to give him a reason to go; If he finds his own, that's something else entirely. But pushing away the only person she has with her on missions, the only thing that keeps her from going crazy from lack of real contact with another person… She'd lose her mind. That's why she keeps her mouth shut and occasionally shoots longing glances his way when she's sure he's not looking; That's why she gets so flustered when he turns to look at her.

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><p>Sallie doesn't know it, but she talks in her sleep - more like shouts, really; Probably tosses and turns, too. He can hear her as he attempts to sleep downstairs, the girl's voice bouncing off the metal walls and seeping into his brain like a sickness. It's usually the same things: "Please, don't leave me", "Come back, please", "I still need you!"…But other times, it's different, completely different: Little whimpers and moans and noises he's never heard her make before, and sometimes there are words, but they are few and far between and he can't quite make them out, even if he moves to stand outside her door. Occasionally, he thinks he hears his name, but shakes his head and retreats down the stairs, telling himself he's crazy, or that if he did hear his name, she's simply scolding him in her sleep. It's the only thing that makes sense in his sleep-addled mind, and it would probably be the only thing to make sense if he were fully awake, as well. He doesn't know much more about the way people work now than he did at ten - just has the understanding required to know where hit, kick, stab, shoot to bring death quickly or slowly. All he knows is how to read people, but not why they may feel that way; It's why he doesn't understand the strange knot of warmth slowly unfurling in his stomach at those noises coming from his employer's room (he at least understands the very basic, more obvious thing, and what he needs to do to… Alleviate it - he <em>has <em>read enough books to know how certain acts work. It's the act itself and the _feelings _that may lead to it that confuse him even a little bit).

He never brings up her sleeping issues - it's not his place to ask, and if she wanted him to know, he's fairly sure by now that she would tell him. It doesn't stop those noises from wriggling into the back of his mind and replaying when he tries to sleep, like it's trying to figure out why those noises may sound the slightest bit familiar. It isn't until one day, seven weeks into their stay in Megaton that anything clicks - the only place he's heard those noises recently is at the saloon, but before Moriarty died, when Nova was working, and_-_ They're in the saloon when he thinks of it, and he just hangs his head for a moment before turning to stare at the vault girl, eyes widened by just a fraction. _If that was what that… And I heard my name_. He's not sure how he feels about this revelation - part of him is still absolutely convinced that his initial assumption had to be correct. Why some pristine (if somewhat foul-mouthed) little smoothskin, _especially _one out of a vault, would want to… Would dream about… He is officially beyond baffled, words and sounds and suddenly mental images shooting through his mind at shocking speed. It's like every educational book or dirty magazine he's scanned over his entire lifetime has combined into a handful of fantasies, the face and body of the white-haired vaultie taking the place of any supposed models, and intensified because he can _hear _her speak, hear her moan and- He cuts that thought off with a shake of his head, before it goes to far and he's stuck sitting at this bar until everyone's left (who is he kidding? He'd probably just leave and flaunt the sizable bulge in his leathers, though he may not _realize _he is flaunting it).

Even with this new information (and fantasies that he hasn't had before) in mind, he's still unsure of what to make of that warmth that spreads out from his stomach and into his chest, where it takes root. It's a completely unfamiliar feeling - there's nothing in his mind to connect it to a memory, not even vaguely. There's been anger and frustration and absolute elation, and even some vague sense of satisfaction - those are things he remembers, if a little unclearly, from his entire life - but never this. Never something that makes him feel mildly nauseous, while at the same time making him feel infinitely better. It's confusing, but not completely unwelcome… Yet. It probably wouldn't be long until he grew irritated with the feeling and asked someone about it - probably Sallie, and if she panicked or didn't know the answer, then it would be Gob that he asked. They were really the only people he knew, and therefore, the only people he was comfortable speaking to at any length; His employer had actually had to speak to the sheriff about the bomb worshipers just to get them to leave him alone.

"Charon. _Charon._ Charon!" Blinking and raising one ruined eyebrow, he turns his head to look at his employer, and there's that surge of _something _again. The girl is dangling a brand new (well, as new as that shit gets out here, anyways) bottle of whiskey in front of his face, shaking it back and forth as if the movement of the amber liquid is going to catch his attention more quickly. A grin spreads over her lips when she realizes he's paying attention. "You want some? Gob says it's on the house." He grunts in reply, lifting the bottle from her fingers and starting slightly when their fingers brush, something that nobody seems to take any notice of. _Thank fucking god. _Touching is never expected; Neither is the lack of cringing. It's mildly less strange now, at least, especially after seeing how she is with that bartender sap, all the hugging and touching. And despite the fact that, as a ghoul, a ghoul wouldn't even be his own first choice, he still expects the girl to one day pull herself over the bar and plant on the bartender (who would probably just start stuttering and freaking out and have some sort of panic attack).

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><p>It's a week later. They've been at the saloon all day, and up until now, she'd been pacing herself with her drinking - taking short pulls from a bottle of whiskey every once in a while between listening to Gob chatter away about what went on when she was gone (by now, you'd think he'd have run out of things to tell her, but obviously not). Now, she's finished four bottles of whiskey, by herself, over the course of something like six hours; She's hit the point where she no longer filters her speech, and her words are somewhat slurred, not that she notices. The way she's actually having to lean against the bar to keep from toppling over, humming along to the tune of a song that nobody else is hearing. Gob's looking at her like she's sprouted some extra limbs, or just proposed some crazy orgy including herself, Charon, and a small handful of townspeople (which wouldn't be completely surprising, in the state she was in). Managing to sprawl herself out over a couple of seats so she could lean against the wall, she grinned broadly, reaching for her near-empty bottle. It seemed to vanish before her eyes, leaving her staring, perplexed, at the place it had once lain. "I think you have had enough to drink, smoothskin." Squinting at Charon as he pushed the bottle into one of his pockets, she frowned. She'd know when she'd had enough to drink, and she definitely hadn't yet. Her words were still relatively clear, she was not yet leaving words out of sentences… She was just swaying a bit and not filtering a damn thing she said, of that much, she was certain - she didn't really filter much anyways, so that didn't matter in the long run.<p>

"I think I'd know if I'd had enough to drink, Charon," she argues, reaching towards him with one hand on the bar to keep herself steady. Never mind that she hadn't even noticed that her words were somewhat slurred together, and the fact that even in her slight irritation, she couldn't stop smiling. Rarely could around Charon, it seemed, thanks to the bloom of intense happiness and something like _love _swelling in her chest. He was always there, always watching, waiting, protecting - and though there was something in the back of her mind protesting all of these things, complaining that she wasn't a child... She liked it; Enjoyed the fact that she didn't always have to have her guard up, because Charon was there, and even when 'relaxed', he always seemed to be ready to move at a moment's notice. Granted, most people didn't really approach when he was around - too big, too scary, too threatening. He made her feel safe, even if that was strange, since everyone and their mother seemed to be under the impression that _all_ ghouls were shuffling, brain-eating monsters. She knew that was definitely not case - the sentient ones were generally kind, if a little bit strange... And they were brave, she had to give them that. Even Gob, poor, sweet Gob; One had to be brave to live through all the mistreatment that came with being a ghoul, and he'd definitely gotten the ass-end of that metaphorical stick.

When Charon pulls away from her, she frowns, pushing her lips into a pout. In her alcoholic haze, she really isn't sure what else can be done to convince him, and she's ready to give up when something hits her and she has to bite the inside of her lip to keep from grinning like a fool. This was bound to go horribly wrong, considering her less than stellar luck, but she was hoping that maybe the fact that she was a smoothskin, the veritably unattainable to ghouls, would work in her favour. Fixing her gaze on her knees for a few seconds, she takes the time to bite at her lips then moisten them, the tip of a pink tongue darting out to smooth over the abused flesh. She counts to three in her head before she returns her eyes to Charon's face, eyes half-lidded and lips ever so slightly parted as she manages to inch herself towards the ghoul, over the stools separating them. Perching herself as carefully as she can on the stool nearest Charon, she leans forward, running one hand over his thigh while the other moves to rest at the nape of his neck, playing with the few strands of hair there. Honestly, she'd considered doing something like this, taking it further and further, more times than she could imagine counting, but always in the privacy of her room. The alcohol had simply given her the bravery to do it, even just one of the... Tamer parts of it. _Good ol' liquid courage_.

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><p>Charon freezes, unsure of what to do. The look she'd given him... If they'd been walking, he would have tripped over his feet. He'd seen her give that look to plenty of others, but she'd never <em>him<em>. His eyes almost slide down to her sinfully full lips, but he forces himself to look into her eyes. But then she's touching him and whispering things he can't quite catch. All he can manage is staring at Gob pleadingly as the smoothskin begins brushing her lips over his jaw - he doesn't know what to do in a situation like this, with someone's hands wandering and lips pressing and teeth nipping, and it's fairly obvious that the other ghoul is just as baffled as he. By the time he was able to force himself to react, the vaultie was pulling away from him, grinning as she held up her bottle of whiskey. _Oh, that was... Well-played. _He couldn't even force himself to be seriously angered at this juncture - it was his own fault he'd fallen for it, vaguely hopefully that she was just going to grab his hand and drag him back to their house, where he would probably not have remained clear-headed enough to allow her to rethink her decision, and it wasn't as though she'd ever given him a reason to think that she would ever want his ruined lips on her skin, his torn hands on her hips, his bitten fingertips brushing over her most sensitive areas. If he'd been less disciplined, he would have let out a strangled groan at his thoughts. This was getting out of hand. He'd gone from routine thoughts to _this _in something like a six days.

It was obviously the alcohol influencing her actions - he can't even fathom a reason why she would willingly kiss, touch, bite at someone who looks like him, or why she'd look at him the way she had, if she wasn't such a damn lightweight. No matter how hard he tries to comprehend it, it just doesn't make sense - someone who is one of the remnants of pure humanity, this little vaultie, so kind and fucking _normal_, wanting to be involved with someone, _something _like him. Something ravaged by radiation and living decades beyond what was normal; Something trained, disciplined, violent, dangerous. Some_one _who doesn't appear to have a genuinely kind bone in their body, just ties to some shitty piece of paper and the brainwashing to have to follow whoever held it. Granted, the contract only entitled his owners to his services in combat (he was _nobody's _errand boy), but shit, if a smoothskin asked, you took what you could get (Whatever it was that was going on in his head regarding Sallie probably helped, too).

But that doesn't mean he doesn't want it, at least in this case. If she asked him, once they were home, if he'd remove his armor and fuck her until she couldn't walk right the next day, he'd do it in a heartbeat, no questions asked. God, did he want her, and it hadn't hit him until just then, and he had to bite his tongue to keep from grimacing. If she knew, she'd probably use it against him - just now had been bad enough, her catching him so off guard with her caresses and nips that he hadn't even notice her hand sliding into one of the pockets at the front of his armor. He knows she knows how lucky she was, too; He can see it in the way she smirks as she takes one final swig of whiskey and arches an eyebrow in challenge, like she's expecting him to snatch the now empty bottle away and scold her, drag her home and do unspeakable things. For a moment, just a flash, the blink of an eye... He seriously considers it. Thinks about batting that bottle out of her hand and tossing her over his shoulder to march home, finger tips gently caressing milky thighs as he walks; Thinks about throwing her down on his bed, pushing their clothing only _just _out of the way and thrusting into her. And fuck, does he ever hope instincts take over for things like that, or he doesn't have a goddamn chance. Fantasies were one thing - in fantasies, you always knew what you were doing, even if you started out fumbling and awkward - but reality was another entirely. Sallie isn't cruel, not really, but he feels like if things ever escalate to that point and she's disappointed or she has a moment of clarity and _realizes _what's happening... He's gone. His contract will be sold as soon as she can stand and run out of wherever they are and convince someone to take it.

"You need to go home, smoothskin." It's all he can manage through his confusion, voice rumbling from somewhere deep in his throat. Before the girl has a chance to look at Gob, bite down on her lip ever so slightly and ask for more whiskey, he stands and carefully lifts her from her seat. "You're going to end up agreeing to something you'll regret if you stay." And then, there is that look again, but he spins her around, hands on her shoulders, and forces her to march towards the door. The vault girl calls a short, slurred goodbye over her shoulder to the bartender, swaying slightly as she does so. He goes slowly, leading her home, hands, gentle, at her shoulders. Every so often, she stumbles, and he moves to pick her up, only to be met by a rather stern 'no'. _Smoothskins_. At the door, as he fumbles one-handed with the key, using the other hand to keep his employer steady before him, she presses her hips back against his insistently. To say that this is unexpected is so far beyond an understatement that he just gapes when the door finally swings open and the girl stumbles inside.

_It's going to be a long night._


	13. Chapter Thirteen: We Intertwined

**Audience, I'm not even going to lie: the single review I got for the last chapter made me squeal like a damn fool. That review is also the reason you get a chapter of what I_ hope_ will be well-written smut. So, y'all can thank _FancyLadySnackCakes_. Pointers would, uh, totally be welcome, since I've never written anything like this before.**

**It's probably... Not going to be good in any sense of the word, but at least I tried. And if it went somewhat well... Then maybe I'll try my hand at it again in the future, and it will be improved.  
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><p><em>You gave me life<br>Now show me how to live_

She's warm, so warm. It feels like her skin is on fire everywhere fabric covers it, feels like her hair is pulled back too tight, like someone's pulling it away from her scalp while it's still in the tight, pristine bun at the back of her head. The first thing she does once she's in her house is pull the old elastic band from her hair, paying it no mind as it snaps against her fingers and falls to the ground in two pieces. All she does is sigh contentedly and run her hands through her hair. The shocking white strands don't even bother her as they usually do, falling free and thick in waves to brush against her shoulder blades, she's so preoccupied with the heat surging through her veins like fire following a trickle of fuel. It's all just because of Charon (and well, the alcohol may be minutely responsibly for amplifying everything she's feeling right now to such a degree). The fire in her veins, the faint, pleasantly warm pressure nestled in a pool of wetness at the junction of her thighs - even if the massive ghoul doesn't realize it (and she's more than willing to bet that he doesn't), he's the cause. She's aware (if only dimly, at this moment) that love and lust aren't the same thing - not even close; But the more she watches him, muscles rolling both visibly and hidden by skin... For her, at least, there's an overlap, and she doesn't give a damn if she'll be mocked and kicked out of cities and denied entrance to certain places. As long as she stays on the good side of the majority of the population of Megaton, she'll always have a home here, at least; That or the Lincoln Memorial, since Hannibal had offered her a place to stay, should she need it, or even Underworld.

Her hands are rushing to undo the fastenings on her top, because she needs to cool off and she needs to feel rough hands on her skin. Hands on her shoulders make her jolt and freeze and suddenly everything's so much clearer, like the first time she put on a pair of those cheesy tortoiseshell glasses that she'd found out in the wastes (by no means was her vision terrible, and the lenses weren't necessary, but everything lost it's mildly hazy edge with them on). As the hands pull away, she nearly lets out a groan of frustration, turning to find Charon standing much, much closer than she had been expecting. "Go to bed, smoothskin." Before now, she's never realized _quite _how tall he is - the top of her head is barely level with her shoulders, and standing on her toes lifts her just enough to be eye level with his chin. Narrowing her eyes up at the ghoul, she shakes her head, catches sight of the large bed in the center of the room and nearly grins.

"No." Normally, she would have listened to him - it's so rare that he really _speaks,_ at least to do something other than shout war cries, and even rarer that he tells her to do something rather than suggesting it - but this time, she's got something else in mind. "Go sit on your bed, Charon." she purrs, smirking and watching with half-lidded eyes as the ghoul perches himself on one edge of his bed, watching her with wary eyes. Licking her lips, she takes one, two, three, four steps, coming to a stop directly in front of him. Carefully, she reaches forward, before deciding against the action and retracting her hand. Instead, she slinks onto the bed, pressing her chest against the expanse of Charon's back and resting her head on his shoulder. "If you want me to stop," she pauses, pressing kisses against the skin and muscle of his neck, "just tell me. I can... Take care of myself." _Been doin' that for a while, anyways, won't make a damn bit of difference_. God, does she ever hope he doesn't say 'no' ; This close, he's deliciously warm, even through her clothes, eliciting another pleased sigh from between slightly parted lips. "Just. Say. No. If you're. Uncomfortable." Her sentence is paused at odd times for her to continue peppering the ghoul's neck with delicate kisses, her arms looping around him to tug at the buckles on the front of his armor when he makes no effort to tell her to stop or make her leave. "I know it's not part of your contract," she adds, because if anything will cause him to say he wants out, that would be it. She waits a few minutes, fingers still working blindly at buckles, and she's prepared to pull away, go upstairs and take care of herself because of the lack of response, when Charon moves, helping her undo the clasps on his armor. Biting down on her tongue to keep some completely undignified noise from escaping her lips, she tugs at bits of armor as they come loose, dropping them onto the floor.

When his top half is bare, she hums appreciatively, running her hands over his shoulder blades (she would be lying through her teeth if she said that she wasn't a sucker for a fantastic pair of shoulders) and around to his front, pressing herself against his back once again, as she traces the well-defined muscles of his chest and abs. "You are drunk." Charon reminds her, and all she does is muster up a snort in reply. "You will regret this, _Sallie_." A bolt of white-hot lightning shoots through her when he says her name; Instead of instantly protesting, she scrambles off of the bed to stare at him. Funny how the only reason she's taller than him now is because of how low this bed is to the ground. Gently, she pushes him back, straddling his lap and only just stifling a small moan when their hips are flush against each other and she can _feel _him, warm and hard beneath her. Her fingertips trace over his jaw, over his cheekbones, thread through the remaining strands of his hair. There's some big speech she has planned out in her mind, telling him that he's wrong and she'll never regret this and he's stupid for suggesting it (this speech, admittedly, would have been ended with her rolling her hips against his and telling him that she _needs _to feel him inside of her, _needs _to feel him filling her up), but the words never make it out; She's too busy kissing him desperately, delivering affectionate little nips to his bottom lip when he seems hesitant to react. Before she has time to react, Charon is molding his lips against hers, threading his tongue into her mouth. Gasping for breath when the kiss finally breaks, she manages a weak smile.

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><p>He's never done this before; Doesn't have a damn clue what he's doing when he finally lifts his hands from their place, hanging limply at his sides, to rest on his employer's hips. All he's doing is emulating her actions when they kiss, occasionally giving her hips a soft squeeze. Where their hips are pressed together, it's blissfully <em>hot<em>, pleasant pressure driving him mad each time the vault girl chooses to roll her hips against his. His pants have grown painfully tight by the time Sallie pulls back to unfasten her top and shrug it off her shoulders, and it only gets worse when he sees what's underneath. Where she'd even found something so thin and sinfully lacy, and in what looks like a relatively unfaded shade of red that contrasts so sharply with the milky skin so consistently hidden by everything she wears, he doesn't know; God, he doesn't even fucking _care_, just knows he'd be happy to sit and stare at her, especially if there are panties to match. But then the bra is gone and he lets out an audible groan before he even has a chance to think about it. For a moment, he knows he looks about as embarrassed as he can manage - that's shot straight to hell when his hands are guided over delightfully soft flesh and the smoothskin in his lap (_his _smoothskin) lets out a throaty moan. Mind completely blank, he just gapes at her, hands dead weight on her chest, as she throws her head back. Another roll of the hips brings him back, and he can hear Sallie mumbling something about his hands.

Experimentally, he kneads at the flesh, swallowing nervously when she arches into his hands and sighs. "So _good_." Blinking, he continues palming one breast, rolling a pebbled nipple between his torn fingertips. Shit, if he knew she'd make _those _noises, he would have done this a long time ago; Just pinned her down and taken her and not even cared that he was winging it. "Charon." With the vault girl writhing in his lap from his ministrations, he's having a bit of trouble focusing on _anything _except the way it sounds when she moans out his name; Long and drawn out and breathy. Trailing his hands down to her hips to steady her, he's about to lean forward and gently take a nipple between his teeth when the girl scoots back, carefully undoing his belts and tugging them from their loops. "Lie back." Quirking a brow, he does as instructed, gasping when she finally gets his pants unfastened and exposes his cock to the open air; It's certainly not cold in the room, but it's a whole hell of a lot fucking colder when things are sensitive. Time to dwell on that (and the accompanying rustle of fabric) is brief - there's the feeling of the bed shifting slightly, and the moment he opens his mouth to speak, he's surrounded by tight, wet heat. After the initial shock, it's like everything has clicked into place. He grips Sallie's hips tightly, fingers digging into her flesh as he brings her back down hard. He meets her hips with short, hard thrusts, eyes fixed on her hand as it slips between them to rub at the swollen nub of her clit. Shakily, he manages to lean up, push one hand into her hair and tug her close to start biting at her necking lightly, soothing over the skin with his tongue. Each little bite earns him a unique little gasp or moan; Her fingers grip his shoulders tightly as she rocks against him and he loves every damn second of it.

"Oh, _fuck_! Mn, Charon!" Then she's clenching down around him like a vice, hot and tight and wet, and throwing her head back, chest heaving. He's still pumping wildly, gritting his teeth, now gripping her hips with bruising force as he slams her down on him. Panting, she leans into him, lays kisses from his collarbone to just below the remnants of his ear as best she can with all the jostling. "Come for me. Come for me, Charon." she murmurs. It's apparently all he needs to hear; At her words, he bites down on her shoulders and spills himself inside of her. Slowly, he loosens his grip on her hips and lets her roll off of him. He expects her to suddenly have a moment of clarity and realization that she's just fucked someone who happens to be missing skin, but instead, she just collapses beside him, breathing deeply. His smoothskin doesn't even seem to realize (or care) that she's currently using his arm as a pillow, or that, if someone were to barge in right now, everything would be on display. In fact, she seems as though she would be content to just lay there for quite a while. He's fairly certain he feels the same. At least the soul-crushing disgust didn't seem to be setting in - she was currently staring at him, eyes half-lidded and a smirk curving over her lips like she's discovered some long lost secret he didn't even know he had.

"What?"

In response, she splays one hand out over his chest, simply looking at the contrast between their skin - hers pale and smooth, aside from the scars, his tanned and torn and missing - and looking mildly worried. "I didn't force you or anything, right? I mean, I know I told you to tell me 'no' if you didn't want to, but you never really answered and..." He stares at her then, long and hard. She really is beautiful, though maybe not conventionally so; It took him seeing her with her hair loose and disheveled around her shoulders to realize it.

"No, smoothskin. You did not."


	14. Chapter Fourteen: Feeling This

**Meh, I'm not a fan of how this chapter turned out. I tried to keep Charon sort of... Well, Charon, and I feel like it didn't work this time around.**

**And hopefully, I stay true to everyone when I finally get my next chapter of _Nothing Places _up.  
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**Does Nova strike anyone else as _really fucking overbearing _or is that just me? I know she's not the worst person you encounter in the game, and, all things considered, she's not that bad... But something about her has always bothered me, which seems to be something that, well, nobody else feels. Maybe this is just me having a general dislike for how a majority of women are portrayed in video games, or maybe I'm just reading far too much into it.**

**I'm also having fun allowing Sallie to kinda explore her personality and such; She hasn't really broken out of being that feigned politeness thing that you need in a vault quite yet. I'm hoping to have that happen before I draw this story to a conclusion and move on to a sequel. **

**As per usual, reviews are very much appreciated. Especially if you have suggestions.**

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><p><em>And though I may not look like much<br>I'm yours_

He's up more than half the night worrying. In a moment of weakness, caused by years of repression and lack of any sort of 'intimacy', he'd slept with his employer. His _drunk _employer. And it hadn't even been long and drawn out and wild, like his fantasies; Quite the opposite, really. There's no way in fucking hell she'll keep his contract around now; After that, she'll probably think that he's incapable of self control of any sort. Probably use some stupid metaphor about dams only being 'so effective', too, or some shit like that. If he's lucky, she'll just slap him or hit him or something, get him out of his contract (technically, he gets to decide what constitutes 'unacceptable physical violence', and while something like this would normally be acceptable, he'd be _free _of the damn contract). But with freedom comes problems - the only place he knows of that accepts trade from ghouls without any issue is Underworld, and it's not really worth trekking all the way back there every time his pack is heavy with salvaged goods. There's always the Craterside Supply, seeing as that nut doesn't seem to care if her customers are human, ghoul or dog or some shit; However, the chance of running into Sallie was a little bit too awkward for his taste. He doesn't want to have to leave - he has a relatively steady source of income, and he's with someone he has an ever-growing fondness for - but if it comes down to that, he won't really have a choice. Ironic how freedom would be what really restricted him, took away so many places he could go and stay, all because the moment someone showed him a glance of intimacy or wanting, he apparently couldn't control himself.

Hazarding a glance at the sleeping vault girl, he sighs. The way she's curled against his side, fingers loosely latched onto his wrist, using his arm as a pillow... There's no way he'll be able to get out of bed without waking her. No way he can brush it off and pretend he left her to sleep downstairs while he took her bed. _Fuck_. Really, he should have just dragged her up to her room and left her there, instead of humouring her in her drunken stupor. Instead, he's laying here, trying to figure out a way to stop the freakout that he's sure is inevitable - preferably something other than 'Well, you wanted it', because that was going to earn him a more than justifiable punch in the jaw (which probably wouldn't hurt so much as it would be shocking). Anyone in their right mind would never sleep with a ghoul, and though she's given him several reasons to doubt her judgement, he's never thought her anything but sane. After last night, after seeing come undone all at once, going from held together to a mess of disheveled hair and swollen lips, and at his hands... Her sanity has officially been doubted. No matter how much she may have _thought_ she _needed _it, she should not have sought sex with a ghoul; Keeping company with one earned her enough odd looks and whispered remarks. This would only make it worse, earn her cruel words and harsh judgement - it would bring only pain. He sleeps dreamlessly when he finally manages to quite his mind for more than a few seconds.

When he wakes, he knows it's not long after sunrise before he ever opens his eyes. He can feel the vault girl still pressed against him, skin wonderfully warm and smooth. He considers disentangling their bodies, knowing that the disgust is bound to go from seed to full bloom in a matter of moments once Sallie wakes... But he can't quite bring himself to move. For one, he still relishes every little moment he has in a real bed; Two, as much as he doesn't want to listen to her shrieks of indignation, or have to dodge her punches and kicks, he wants to enjoy this for as long as he can. _It will probably never happen again_. He doesn't remember ever being this worried about anything before; It's always only that little nagging sense in the back of his mind. That nagging little sense that he had completely ignored last night, for the first time in his miserable life. This was all his own fault, all of it. Two centuries had finally allowed all sense of conscious reason and control to being breaking down, obviously, and this was just the beginning of the end. By the time he'd fully unraveled, maybe he'd resemble a fucking normal person.

As he continues to freak out internally, Sallie begins to stir at his side. He freezes, unsure of what to do; All the brainwashing and training sure as shit hadn't prepared him for a moment like this. He doesn't know if he should just jerk away and roll off of the best like an idiot, or continue to lie there like he wants to; Doesn't know if she'll be more offended one way or the other. Doesn't really know anything right now, really - his mind's like a brand new chalkboard, just waiting to be covered in scrawling letters.

* * *

><p>Of one thing, she is fairly certain: she's never woken up so damn sore or warm, not that she remembers, at least. For a few moments, she struggles to remember, and what she <em>does<em> hits her full force the moment it returns to her mind. Flashes of the previous night are vivid in her mind - her, making those from-from-soft noises, panting, whimpering, and little cries of pleasure, chanting his name like it's the only word she knows; Him, hot and hard and _exquisite _within her, only occasionally allowing himself a grunt or groan, and never uttering a word, fingertips biting into her hips with bruising force. And it had been all sorts of _wonderful_, not some awkward obligation like it had felt like with Butch all those years ago in the vault, but genuine want and need and blinding, smouldering heat. With a long, low sigh, she settles back against the source of warmth beside her; Her eyes pop open a moment later, when the warmth goes rigid, and she's wondering how she didn't realize sooner that it was something living, breathing. A short shift is enough to feel the patchy flesh against hers, comforting and familiar. To her, it's more than a little bit surprising that Charon stayed - he doesn't exactly strike her as the 'cuddle after sex' type. Hell, he probably doesn't strike _anyone _as that type, considering he isn't exactly chatty. Or emotional. Or a lot of other things, but she doesn't care because she loves him all the same - or thinks she does, at least. She's only twenty, she has no fucking _clue _what it feels like to be in love. Somewhat groggy, she rolls onto her other side, large eyes blinking up at Charon. He looked... Well, about as worried as he was probably capable of looking, and that concerned her. It was always worrisome when someone had a look like that on their face.

"What?" The ghoul looks startled, as though he had been expecting something other than her simple question. She watches him intently, catches it when, briefly, the weathered skin between his brows wrinkles. Silence settles, leaving her wondering if she's done something wrong or if he is genuinely uninterested in her and last night was a fluke or something. Sometimes, she genuinely wishes she hadn't given him so many freedoms (okay, that's not true, but she's worried and vaguely frustrated _because _she's worried, and she's not thinking all that clearly).

There was that look again. _Fuck fuck fuck, what if he's upset? Can Charon even **be **upset? Shit, I should have waited, should have thought, should have- _"You are... Not upset." Her thoughts stop dead. _What is he even talki- Oh. **Oh**_. _He thinks..._? Well, that was new and somewhat unexpected. How does one react to _that _particular worry? She's not entirely sure why she would be upset anyways; There's no reason that she can think of, but she's not all that good with picking up on things sometimes. She's intelligent, yes, and observant when it suits her, but she sure as hell isn't high functioning upon first waking.

She's definitely not awake enough to be having any sort of conversation about being upset, at least if she wants to understand it. Right about now, she just wants to roll over and go back to sleep, and preferably, stay that way for a while. "Why would I be...?" Maybe it's something obvious. Probably is. Despite wracking her brain for possible issues with this situation, she's not having much luck. She rubs at her eyes, hoping it will clear away the sleep and help her _think_, but it doesn't. She's still groggy and mildly confused and squinting at the ghoul, who has managed to scoot away from her, eying her from the edge of the bed like she's sprouted horns or an arm has just burst from her stomach like people in the vault expected with exposure to radiation.

"Why? _Why_?" What she'd expected was that same stoicism she always sees; A calm question and an explanation. It's not what she gets, like she's gotten under his skin without intending to. "_Look _at me! What kind of smoothskin sleeps with someone like me?" _Well, obviously, this kind; The batshit ones from the vault, where all we grow is crazies_. But that's obviously not the answer he's looking for. She opens her mouth, closes it, repeats the action a few times; Sometimes, it's just better for her not to talk, lest she stumble through her words like a fool. And just like that, Charon's right back to squared shoulders (and, _god_, did she love those shoulders) and clipped tone over a slightly more formal style of speaking. "You drank, I let this happen. I understand completely if you wish to transfer my contract to another. I had no right to-"

Well, at least she'd gotten him talking - maybe not quite in the way she'd like, but it's a step, even if it didn't stick. "Shut _up_."

* * *

><p>"Excuse me?" It's not a question, the way he says it; It's a flat statement, like he doesn't believe that she's interrupted him. That's true enough - he genuinely doesn't get why she's cutting him off in the midst of a long-winded apology, rather than accepting it and telling him what will happen next. At first, he doesn't get an answer, just a look that he can't quite identify, because it's there and gone in an instant. Sallie has a sheet wrapped around her body, and she's fiddling with the fraying end of it, opening and closing her mouth like a fish out of water for a while. Aside from their breathing, the next ten minutes pass in silence, and he starts to wonder if he should just leave before his employer gets a chance to speak - he doesn't know for sure what she'll say, and he's not completely sure he wants to hear it.<p>

Just when he thinks she's is actually _waiting _for him to leave, the girl finally moves, stares at him with those clear, clear eyes, but that isn't what he's looking at. All he sees is the bruise that's blossomed on her right shoulder, dark against her pale skin; He brushes his fingertips over it before he can stop himself. Sallie _grins_, runs her hand over the mark, and something halfway between a hum of pleasure and a content sigh falls from her lips. "That's from you, y'know." How should he feel about _that_? He's pretty sure he should feel something like guilt, and maybe he does, but it's hidden beneath layers of confusion, all thanks to her reaction; He doesn't like that he's hurt her, obviously bruised her. Or maybe he does. He's not entirely sure, to be perfectly honest, and the twinge in his gut isn't enough to sway his opinion either way. "You bit me, when you came." She's speaking so... Candidly about this, there are really only two options: either she is genuinely not bothered by this, or she wants to lure him into a false sense of security before she sells his contract. Both are more than plausible, he supposes. "Listen, Charon," she eventually says, scooting closer to him and reaching for his hand. Instinctively, he recoils, watches a frown appear on the girl's features and then holds out with hand, looking more than a little bit put out. With a roll of her eyes, the vault girl presses his hand to her chest; He can feel her heart beating rapidly against his palm. "That's because of _you_. Not some useless wasteland asshole who I wouldn't trust as far as I can throw 'em," he nearly interrupts her to tell her that she can't really throw all that well anyways, so that doesn't mean much. "_You_."

He just stares at her for a few moments, silent and feeling her heartbeat, strong and even and fast. "Why." The way she's looking at him, eyes hooded despite the mild irritation present, it's safe to say it's not nerves.

"Because, ah, ehm..." She looks sheepish. "I'm not... You're... I trust you, Charon. With my life. And I don't know if what I feel is love, or it's just me being overwhelmed that there's someone who is always there with me, who always has my back, or what, because I'm young." _Well, **that's **all sorts of reassuring_. "But, uh... Fuck, Charon. I trust you, and, and... You're probably the only person in the whole goddamn wasteland who I trust unconditionally, and you make me feel safe, as fucking stupid as that sounds."

He's fairly certain she doesn't actually trust _him _so much as she trusts his _contract_. There is a rather large distinction between the two, that people don't seem to notice. "I think you are... Mistaken, smoothskin." Okay, that may have been the wrong thing to say. Sallie looks absolutely livid, swatting his hand away from her like it's a fly or a cloud of smoke. She's scooting to the opposite edge of the bed to scoop her clothing from the floor and redress herself, and he suddenly feels _guilty_. "Are you sure it is _me _you trust, not my contract?" he finally says in an attempt to clarify and quell her anger. It doesn't work, but it does halt her movements and cause her to turn her head around to stare at him over her shoulder, eyes narrow. "It is a simple enough mistake to m-"

Jaw set, the smoothskin returns to her task. "Of _course _I'm sure, are you an _idiot_? Charon, you've seen me at my best. You've seen me at my worst. _I gave you permission to leave if you didn't agree with the things I did, and you stayed_. Plus, if I remember correctly, your contract only entitles me to your services in combat. Dragging my ass out of Moriarty's isn't combat. Keeping me from beating the everliving fuck out of the bastard Wernher wasn't combat. You're... Worth trusting, even if you don't know it."

* * *

><p>"What did <em>you <em>do last night?" Sallie scowls at Nova, but automatically covers the bruise curving over her shoulder with her hand. She starts when the palm of her hand meets fabric and she is reminded of the old grey tee she wears, and the jeans hacked into shorts slung low on her hips. The former whore chuckles, shaking her head and trailing fingers lightly over the dark spots of bruising on the lone wanderer's hips as she passes by. "Trust me, honey, I know _all _about bruises like those. Who'd you take a tumble with?" The vault girl doesn't miss the fleeting look spared in Gob's direction, but she can't quite tell if it's a look of something unrequited or secrecy.

With square shoulders, she refuses to look at Nova; She's still not fond of her after so much time. "I don't see how it's any of your business who I '_took a tumble with_', Nova." _But at least I didn't need **caps **for it, you awful whore_.

"Why, ashamed? Know all about that, too." Oh, she's so far from ashamed; What she is, is still concerned about Charon. She doesn't know if he... Well, she doesn't really know shit about how he feels about the situation, because after she'd finally gotten herself cleaned up and clothed, she hadn't spoken to him about it any more. Rather, she'd sort of just panicked and gone straight to the saloon.

_Don't react negatively, don't react negatively, it's what she wants_. She does her best to stay silent, sipping at a Nuka-Cola, but Nova continues prodding her for answers, cooing unwanted comments in her ears for who knows how long. This is why she doesn't like Nova - she doesn't know when to keep her nose out of other peoples' business, doesn't have the decency to stop questioning. Normally, the vault girl does her best to spare a kind word for even her least favourite people, but the former whore is making her rethink that; All she wants to do is snap and tell the older woman that, if it wasn't for Gob, she would have been staying in the common house. Drumming her fingers on the bar, she bats at wandering hands and continues to scowl. "Listen, I don't know what you aren't getting about this, Nova! I'm not telling you who I-" Her voices loses its strength and trails off as the door creaks open and Charon enters the building, looking distinctly less pleased than usual and muttering something about 'batshit, bomb-worshiping fuckwits'. Instead of composing herself quickly, she just sort of stares at him as he stomps over to the bar and takes a seat beside her.

Obviously, Nova is able to draw her own conclusion, as she gives a catlike grin and looks all too satisfied with herself. "Oh, so... Big, bad and ghoulish, huh? Wouldn't have guessed." Of course, she couldn't just leave well enough alone; That would make things simple and somewhat pleasant. Despite the questioning looks that both Gob and Charon are currently giving her (Gob looks decidedly more annoyed than confused, and she is suddenly less fond of the way he's slowly been coming out of his shell since Moriarty's death), the twenty year old continues trying to drown the awkwardness she was currently feeling with warm, fizzy soda. "No need to be shy, honey. You're among friends here."

Gritting her teeth against the slew of insults threatening to spill from her lips (most of which involved the fact that Nova had been stuck more times than the old picture of Amata that Butch used for target practice back in the vault), Sallie forced a smile. "Nova, you and I are not now, nor have we _ever been _friends. If you _insist _upon repeatedly bringing up the subject, then I will tell you: Yes, I did, in fact, sleep with Charon." At her side, the aforementioned ghoul let out a noise halfway between a snort of amusement and some sort of shocked choking. She'd honestly half-expected him to back her up, start throwing in details; Really, she was sort of glad he hadn't, because she'd probably have ended up red in the face.

As it were, she was currently trying to keep just that from happening, while still managing to keep running her mouth until she either forced herself to leave, Gob had a panic attack, or Charon dragged her out of here. Grinning wickedly, she pressed on, amused by the look of curiosity that crossed the redhead's features. "Don't regret it in the least, either. He's hung like a-" Good lord, was she ever happy when a ruined hand pressed itself over her mouth, because she honestly wasn't entirely sure where she'd been going with that comment. She'd only ever read things like that phrase, and it usually went along the lines of 'hung like a horse', but she had no fucking clue what a horse was, and Nova probably didn't either. She'd have to ask Charon or Gob about it, at some point.

And then a blush was creeping up her neck, because Charon was muttering in her ear and she was surprised he was speaking and even more surprised about the content. Definitely not complaining though, no sir. "If you're going to put your mouth to good use, wait until we return home, smoothskin." She's fairly certain that she made an undignified squeak at that point, staring wide-eyed and expecting _someone _to have heard. Where that streak of boldness had come from, she doesn't know, but she's not entirely sure she cares; Apparently, when something clicks in Charon's head, it _clicks_. Hell, she would have tried this from the beginning, if she'd known it would work. _Actually, I probably wouldn't have, but **shit**, do I ever wish I would have. Whoever bombed the royal **fuck **out of our country did me a favour bec- Oh, sweet fuck, what am I thinking_. Fully aware that the saloon's other three inhabitants were currently staring at her (Charon somewhat more expectantly than the others, trying to gauge her reaction), the girl bowed her head and scurried towards the door. "Right, well, time to go home, be by again later or tomorrow or who knows when, bye!"**  
><strong>


	15. Note!

_AN_: **Hate to give you guys false hope here, but it was that or take even longer to update, and tell you then. School has started up, meaning I have limited time to work on my stories right now - until I get my laptop around the end of this month. Between homework and babysitting, I haven't had much time to write, or sit and brainstorm where I'd like to take my chapters. All I request is that you guys leave me ideas, so I have something to go on when I get back~ Thanks for your patience.**


	16. Chapter Sixteen: Born of Dark Water

**So, after a long, long wait, I'm back. Sadly, the chapter is much shorter than it normally would have been, but no matter how many times I tried to rewrite it, it always came out feelings like I was, well, babbling.**

* * *

><p><em>i've seen many things so beautiful, it's true<br>__but i've never seen nothing like you_

It's been months since they've left Megaton – Sallie's fairly certain that they've hit the eight month mark, if she's going to be honest. She's been trying to work up to going to meet her father in Rivet City since before the Pitt, and the longer she stays, the more sure she is that it's never going to happen. It's not that she doesn't want to help her father – his goal is a noble one, for sure – but rather, she knows that they still have issues to work through and she doesn't want to deal with those issues. She loves her father, she does, because he's been there for her entire life and he's always been supportive; that doesn't make her less frustrated with him having left her in a hole in the ground with a bunch of psychos with some weird mental problems. Day in and day out, it's been her and Charon, patrolling around Megaton for something to do (which effectively eliminated Stockholm's purpose, meaning he could venture down from his post high above the city more than once or twice a month), or sitting up in Gob's saloon, slinging back beers and whiskey, with her laughing drunkenly, long and loud, and him at her side, shaking his head at her.

Except for last night, when she had ended up slung over Charon's shoulder the moment she'd asked Gob for a drink. The bartender had chuckled and bid them good night, ignoring her as she half-screeched, half-laughed, calling out for him to make Charon put her down. She hadn't succeeded in anything more than drawing the attention of the bomb worshippers as they left the building, the lot of them gaping openly as the massive ghoul smiled and hauled the woman higher up on his shoulder. She'd flipped them off, laughing loudly as she returned her attention to breaking free from her … Well, she's still not sure what to call him aside from 'Charon' and 'ghoul', to be honest. If the world were different, _normal_, she's sure it'd be 'boyfriend' or 'lover' or any of a multitude of other words that mean the exact same things, but neither of those things seems to fit what Charon is (on top of that, if the world were normal, she wouldn't even _have _Charon, but that was a whole other crate of things she didn't want to think about).

And this morning, she's tired and refusing to get up, rolling over and burying her face in her pillow as she tugs the sheets up to her shoulders. Charon's already up – she can hear him moving around a few feet away in the kitchen – but he's not trying to wake her, for which she is grateful. It isn't as though she didn't sleep well; she just doesn't want to get up. She's not a morning person like she was before she left the vault (then again, as far as she knew, the time was _all sorts _of fucked up in the vault, and what they were told was day was really night out here), and most days in Megaton, it takes her at least half an hour to actually drag herself out of bed and get things done. Most of the time, it's not that she's actually tired, but that she just doesn't want to peel her eyes open and greet the day, realize that, yes, she is living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and yes, her house is made of pieced together scraps of metal, and yes, she was raised in a hole in the ground.

"I know you are awake, smoothskin," Charon says from the kitchen, and she doesn't need to roll over and squint at him from the heart-shaped bed to know that he is rolling his eyes and smirking as he looks at her. The thought almost makes her smile. Almost.

Instead, she groans and burrows deeper into the bed. "No'm not, Charon. Don't make things up," she mumbles into the pillow, squeezing her eyes shut tighter, like she thinks that maybe, if she can't see anything, she won't have to get up, she'll just be able to lay here for the rest of her life. She hasn't thought that way since her tenth birthday – boy, was that ever a shitty party. It was also the last time she'd felt genuinely close to Amata, like they really _were _friends (she's a bit ashamed to admit that, when she started feeling like they weren't anymore, that's around the time that they're meant to take the G.O.A.T., and instead of getting the Tunnel Snakes to leave the other girl alone, she tells them that's she's insecure about her weight and then fucks off to class – she can hear Amata crying softly for the duration of the test and feels a twinge of guilt in her chest. She stops feeling guilty about that altogether when, at eighteen, Amata starts teasing her about the crush she'd had on Freddie "the Freak" Gomez back in the day, and the crush she now harbors on Butch DeLoria, and goes onto say that nobody in the vault wants anything to do with the "prematurely white-haired nerdy vault doctor's daughter"; that's a comment that earns her a snappy comment about being the overseer's daughter and a stern 'fuck you'). It's strange thinking about the vault now, now that she has no real ties to it. Sure, she's sort of-kind of- not really friends with Butch and Freddie and even Paul Hannon, but nobody else. Amata may have helped her get out of the vault, but she's pretty sure that was more because she didn't want the blood on her hands than because they were friends.

Charon smiles wryly, rolling his eyes. "I am hardly 'making things up', smoothskin. You have been awake for nearly fifteen minutes now; are you planning on never getting up?"

Sallie turns her head slightly to squint at Charon, making a face. "And what if I am, you big lug?" She knows he won't do much more than take her blankets away, which is more than enough to get her up, but she's hoping that, against all odds, he won't do that today, he'll just let her lounge about.

* * *

><p>Two weeks from that day, and they're finally leaving Megaton (and Sallie is pleased to report that Charon <em>did <em>let her lounge around like a lazy teenager that day). Sallie has bought every stimpak and box of bandages in town, along with any ammunition available for the guns she and Charon have. She's picked through the array of food offered at all the shops (she only ends up buying a few boxes of InstaMash, and she and Charon decide they'll hunt for the rest of their food – not like that will be too difficult).

For the first time in a long time, she's wearing her merc charmer outfit - it may not offer her much protection, but it allows her a fairly good range of motion and it doesn't make the heat outside any worse. Within city limits, she generally keeps to dresses she's found in old suitcases or sewn together from old scraps of fabric - things that make it clear she has no desire to fight - and she should probably wear pants outside of town, but all the pants she owns are leather. While she appreciates the look of leather pants - and she _does _keep a pair with her in case - she has no desire to tromp around in them most of the time; she'd much rather watch Charon tromp around in his leathers (and she is _not _ashamed to admit that, thank you - she spent the first nineteen years of her life minding her manners and being, for the most part, the well-behaved child she was expected to be, and she wasn't doing it anymore).

"Ready to go, Charon?" Sallie is met with a nod, one that makes her nervous only because it means that this is really happening. She's found her father, sure, but she's leaving her new home - possibly for the last time, because _who knows anything __out here_? - to go and help him; she knows it's for the good of the wasteland... But that doesn't make the tasks that lie ahead any less daunting.

She just hopes this isn't the last time she sees Megaton fading into the distance when she turns around.

* * *

><p>When they finally reach Rivet City, Sallie is dead tired. Months spent in Megaton have spoiled her, gotten her used to having a bed to curl up in every night - makes a bed roll or a crappy cot found in an old shack seem really lackluster. Charon doesn't seem to be sharing the same issue, but he's trained for this sort of thing, sleeping on the go or hardly at all; she isn't. Sure, she had her fair share of sleepless nights back in the vault, but that was another thing entirely: studying for tests all night and drinking half her father's coffee in the morning so she could actually stay awake through the damn thing, or giggling late into the night during sleepovers with Amata.<p>

She decides against going straight to the lab where she assumes where father will be, instead renting out a room at the Weatherly so she can sleep. Without a second thought, she's shuffling into the room, dropping things and plucking an old pair of pajamas out of her pack and changing into them. "You can go do... Whatever you want, Charon, if you aren't tired," she tells her ghoul through a yawn as she falls back onto the bed, wriggling beneath the covers.

Charon shakes his head, peels off his armor (okay, more like 'meticulously removes it', because that armor is not easy to get out of or help someone out of) until he stands in his underthings and nudges her over. "Not many here are fond of ghouls," he reminds her gently, "so there would not be much for me to do, smoothskin. No, I will sleep now. No one will go anywhere just because they have to wait a few more hours for you."

It's the last thing Sallie hears before she falls asleep that night, and when she wakes the next morning, she's vaguely confused by that, because she's not entirely sure the conversation actually happened. She shrugs it off, though, notes that Charon has just returned with breakfast - or rather, what constitutes breakfast out here, which seems to be two bowls of noodles - so he's probably been awake for a while.

"Good morning, smoothskin."

"G'mornin', Cha-" she pauses, yawning widely, "-ron. Been up long."

The massive ghoul shakes his head, handing her one of the bowls in his hands. "Only an hour or so, smoothskin. Now eat."


End file.
